By Steve Gorman
LOS ANGELES, Nov 2 (Reuters) - Jury selection was due to begin on Monday in the federal retrial of a man prosecutors say deliberately set a blaze that grew into one of the deadliest, most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history.
Jonathan Rinderknecht, 30, whose initial three-week trial ended in a hung jury in late June, was slated to return to US District Court in downtown Los Angeles to face a scaled-down version of the charges previously leveled against him.
Rinderknecht, a former
Uber driver of dual US-French citizenship, was cast by prosecutors as a dejected loner who harbored deep anger at society, particularly the wealthy, and channeled his rage into an act of arson.
He is accused of "maliciously" starting a brush fire on January 1, 2025, that was quickly extinguished but smoldered in the roots of dense scrub before re-igniting days later, whipped by fierce winds into a conflagration that laid waste to the seaside enclave of Pacific Palisades.
Defense attorneys have maintained that Rinderknecht was wrongly accused. They asserted the hilltop New Year's Day blaze was triggered by holiday fireworks, not their client, and that the massive Palisades inferno that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of homes a week later was a separate fire set by someone else.
The opposing narratives of the disaster left jurors deadlocked 10-2 in favor of acquittal and unable to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the three charges in June.
Judge Anne Hwang declared a mistrial, and prosecutors moved to retry the defendant under a grand jury indictment that dropped one of the original charges Rinderknecht faced and modified the two remaining federal arson counts.
Nearly 7,000 homes and other structures went up in flames, with property losses estimated at $150 billion, some of that belonging to organizations receiving federal financial assistance or involved in interstate commerce.
SIMULTANEOUS DISASTERS
The Palisades blaze coincided with another catastrophic wind-driven wildfire that erupted almost simultaneously in Eaton Canyon, about 30 miles to the east, killing 19 people and ravaging the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena. Fire investigators later concluded that sparks from an electrical transmission tower ignited the Eaton fire.
Rinderknecht was the only person criminally charged in connection with either of the two January 7 blazes, which together rank as the deadliest wildfire calamity ever in Los Angeles County, surpassing the 29 lives lost in the Griffith Park fire of 1933.
Rinderknecht, who pleaded not guilty, declined to testify in his own defense during his first trial. He would face up to 40 years in prison if found guilty as charged under the latest indictment. The original indictment carried a maximum prison term of 45 years.
He has remained in custody since his arrest in Florida in October 2025.
Defense attorney Steve Haney asserted during the first trial that prosecutors lacked physical evidence linking Rinderknecht to arson or any records showing an intent to commit arson.
In court documents and public statements about the case, Haney also suggested that his client was being scapegoated for failures of the Los Angeles Fire Department.
A onetime Pacific Palisades resident himself, Rinderknecht professed his innocence in a court declaration filed last March, denying he had willfully started any fire.
He acknowledged witnessing the outbreak of the January 1 fire, originally called the Lachman fire, from the vantage point of a hill he had climbed to watch New Year's fireworks. But Rinderknecht said he immediately called emergency 911 to report the blaze and remained at the scene until firefighters arrived and offered to help them.
Prosecutors have alleged that while placing his 911 call, Rinderknecht asked the AI app ChatGPT on his phone whether someone could be found at fault for lighting a fire "because of your cigarettes," to which ChatGPT replied, "Yes."
Prosecutors also said security camera footage and location data from Rinderknecht's cellphone show he was the only person in the vicinity of the January 1 blaze when it began near a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Jonathan Spicer )
