Ten jurors voted not guilty. Two voted guilty. After 13 hours of deliberation over two days, a federal jury in Los Angeles told the judge it could go no further, and on Friday Judge Anne Hwang declared a mistrial in the arson case against Jonathan Rinderknecht, accused of starting the deadly Palisades Fire.
The jury’s last note, sent Thursday afternoon, was blunt. “We have people on both sides that are dead set, unwavering and unwilling to change their opinion.” It added that nothing the court could do would help, and that rereading testimony would not change anything. Jurors were split on all three charges.
Prosecutors had asked Hwang to send the panel back to deliberate. She declined, citing a “risk of coercion.” “The court finds there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial because the jury is deadlocked,” she said. The defense had pushed for a mistrial from the start of Friday’s hearing, and once the jurors confirmed the impasse, both sides agreed.
The government will try again
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said within minutes that his office would retry the case. “The evidence is strong that Jonathan Rinderknecht is responsible for igniting the fire on January 1, 2025, which eventually became the Palisades Fire,” he wrote on X. “We fully intend to retry this case before a new jury and obtain guilty verdicts on all charged counts.”
Defense attorney Steven Haney read the vote differently, calling the count a “pretty resounding indication” that his client is innocent. Rinderknecht pleaded not guilty. He faces three counts, including destruction of property by means of fire and timber set afire, which carry up to 45 years in prison. A retrial is set for mid-October.
One juror spoke to reporters outside the courthouse. “There was just not enough proof,” she said, adding, “I just felt like, a lot of holes.” She called a retrial a “waste of our American dollars” and said she doubted the prosecution’s theory that the Palisades Fire was a “holdover” from an earlier blaze, the Lachman Fire. “Shouldn’t the firemen, shouldn’t they have known?” she asked.
What the trial turned on
Prosecutors said Rinderknecht lit the Lachman Fire near midnight on Dec. 31, 2024, with a grill lighter, in brush above the Summit neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Firefighters thought they had put it out. It smoldered in root systems until strong Santa Ana winds on Jan. 7, 2025, pushed it above ground. The Palisades Fire killed 12 people, burned 23,448 acres and destroyed about 6,800 structures.
The evidence was largely circumstantial. Jurors saw security camera images and phone location data placing Rinderknecht, then driving for Uber, at the Hidden Buddha clearing where the fire is thought to have started. He called 911 more than a dozen times. Investigators also reviewed thousands of his ChatGPT conversations, in which he wrote about anger and wealth disparity, and an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives testified that his account of his movements conflicted with the phone data. A behavioral expert described the conduct as consistent with a “societal revenge” arsonist.
Haney argued that fireworks were the likelier cause and that nobody knows when the first fire started. “No arsonist sets a fire and calls 911 for them to put it out … and then waits around to be arrested,” he told jurors. Two defense experts said the scene went unsecured for 13 days.
The Mangione angle
Rinderknecht’s searches included Luigi Mangione, who is charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani told Fox News Digital that the deadlock raises concerns about jury nullification. He said the Rinderknecht jury may have been angry at local officials after a fire that killed 12 people. Mangione, he said, presents a more direct risk. “He’s probably the most popular accused murderer I’ve ever covered in my 25 years of practice,” Rahmani said, adding that by some surveys 10 to 20 percent of people think the killing was justified.
A defense team needs only one sympathetic juror out of 12, Rahmani noted, which is about 8 percent. He also warned of “stealth jurors” who hide their biases to get onto a panel. Mangione’s federal trial could start around the same time as the Rinderknecht retrial. Fox News Digital reached out to Mangione’s defense team for comment.
Sources
- Palisades Fire deadlock fuels fear that ideology is creeping into jury box — and Mangione could be next
- Deadlocked Jury Leads to Mistrial in Case of Palisades Fire Arson Suspect – The San Fernando Valley Sun
- Mistrial declared after jury deadlocks in arson trial over deadly 2025 Palisades Fire in Los Angeles
