Judge Anne Hwang’s evidentiary rulings Wednesday narrowed what jurors will be allowed to hear in the federal arson case against Jonathan Rinderknecht, who prosecutors say sparked the Palisades Fire that tore through neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Malibu. The judge said certain evidence the defense sought to connect to an earlier January blaze was not relevant to the charges against Rinderknecht and could confuse the jury, according to the arguments presented during the hearing.
Rinderknecht, 29, pleaded not guilty to starting what prosecutors say became one of the most destructive wildfires in California history. Prosecutors contend he set a fire on Jan. 1 that burned deep in root systems without being detected before it flared back up a week later, when the Palisades Fire began on Jan. 7, 2025. They said the blaze eventually killed 12 people.
Wednesday’s dispute centered on how the defense planned to use material gathered in a separate lawsuit filed by fire victims against the city. Defense attorneys sought to introduce testimony and depositions from Los Angeles Fire Department personnel and a state park ranger, including statements intended to show that the New Year’s Day blaze was visibly smoldering when first responders left the scene. Judge Hwang ruled the depositions could not be introduced, saying they were irrelevant to the arson charges before the court and risked confusing jurors.
Prosecutors also faced limits on what they can show jurors about the defendant’s conduct before the wildfire. Judge Hwang barred prosecutors from introducing AI-generated images of a city burning that prosecutors said Rinderknecht created months before the Palisades Fire.
Rinderknecht’s lead attorney, Steve Haney, said the exclusion of the ChatGPT images mattered because they were “very, very prejudicial” and taken out of context. Haney told the court the case still allows discussion of other Los Angeles Fire Department actions, including its initial response to and investigation of the Jan. 1 fire, as well as other aspects of what first responders observed.
Haney said he plans to argue that prosecutors do not have solid evidence linking Rinderknecht to the Jan. 1 fire that first burned, and that first responders had heard fireworks in the vicinity of where the blaze started. In the same hearing, Hwang’s ruling preserved room for the defense to raise questions about the government’s evidence connecting Rinderknecht to the ignition and early course of the events.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, plan to present their theory of the case using a pretrial roadmap filed in an April 29 memo from the U.S. attorney’s office. That outline describes prosecutors’ approach to the defendant’s alleged state of mind on the night before the first fire began, setting the stage for what the government intends to argue as the trial begins.
Rinderknecht’s trial is set to begin June 8, according to Wednesday’s proceedings. In the lead-up, Haney has said the prosecution is treating Rinderknecht as a scapegoat for the Los Angeles Fire Department’s failure to fully extinguish the earlier blaze.