Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, January 19, 1995 TAG: 9501190130
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
After a 12-hour trial and nearly two hours of deliberation that didn't end until 1 a.m., a jury sentenced Luther R. Brown Jr. to 10 years in prison and fined him $50,000.
Brown had been charged with setting fire to the house in the Rainbow Forest subdivision off U.S. 460. The fire started in the house's kerosene-soaked basement in the early morning of June 8.
A week earlier, Brown had reported to the Botetourt County Sheriff's Office that someone had broken into the house and doused the basement and stairwell with kerosene.
Commonwealth's Attorney Robert Hagan argued that it was Brown who poured the kerosene and started the fire a week later.
His motive, Hagan said, was meanness - which is a difficult motive to prove.
``The difficulty was, he didn't profit from the fire,'' Hagan said. ``I knew it would be hard to convince the jury that someone could act out of meanness alone.''
But the checkered past of the former owner of an adult bookstore and a massage parlor helped Hagan's cause.
In the 1970s, Brown was accused of hiring a teen-age drug addict to set fire to a Roanoke paint supply and hardware store. After two mistrials, the charges were dismissed.
In 1993, his Roanoke home burned, resulting in a $15,000 insurance payment, which he received that September.
But Bertie Wheeler, the Troutville house's previous owner, never saw the $15,000 Brown agreed to pay her when he moved into the house in early September 1993.
Instead, Brown persuaded her to reduce that to $6,000. Brown made only one payment on the mortgage, which he had agreed to assume.
Hagan alleged that Brown set the fire because he figured Wheeler was close to obtaining the foreclosure deed she needed to evict him. Wheeler previously had been stalled by Brown's 10th bankruptcy filing since 1984.
``That's an automatic way to get a stay. ... It's a good business practice,'' Brown testified of his painting and wallcovering business' Chapter 11 filing. Prosecution witness Michael St.Clair said that he heard Brown at the Capital Restaurant in Roanoke bragging about setting the fire.
``I know that he set it,'' St.Clair said. ``He told me at a bar that he was being evicted from his house, so he set the fire with kerosene.''
Defense attorney John H. Kennett Jr. countered that St.Clair, who had a rap sheet ``as long as my arm,'' was not a credible witness. He also argued that Brown had no real motive, because he had nothing to gain from the fire and lost personal belongings in it.
Brown testified he was awakened on the morning of June8 by the smoke alarm and jumped out a bedroom window to escape.
He even returned to the scene in August to make a video to prove that he could jump out the window. However, all the camcorder caught was a blurry glimpse of a gray-haired figure getting stuck in the window, then falling.
After the jury returned the verdict, Hagan spoke about the difficulty of the case.
``Arson is difficult to prove, because there's seldom a witness to the crime,'' he said. ``No one saw Luther Brown strike this match, but Luther Brown had the motive and the opportunity. No one else did.''
Kennett said Brown would appeal the decision. Kennett said he wants the conviction overturned because Brown's rights were violated when he was not allowed to enter the house with a private investigator to collect his own evidence after the fire.
Brown's bond was set at $50,000.
Memo: ***CORRECTION***