Mark Kirk (convict)

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Mark Kirk was convicted of triple homicide related to an apartment house fire at the Beaver Brook Apartments in New Castle County, Delaware on December 5, 1996. Kirk eventually confessed to starting the fire by pouring Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum on an electric stove burner in his apartment. Opinions vary as to whether Kirk was truly guilty, whether the fire was truly ignited in that way, whether his confession was valid, and whether it ought to have been admitted at trial.

1 Events surrounding the fire
2 Trial and verdict
3 Controversy surrounding the trial and verdict
4 Present status
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Events surrounding the fire

At the time of the fire, Mark Kirk was 35 years old and a graduate of a vocational or technical/vocational high school; he had had previous police contacts and had previously received Miranda warnings.^[1] He was living in an apartment with a woman and her two boys, aged 16 and 10. According to his own account, a week before the fire started he was informed by his girlfriend that the right front burner on their stove had caught on fire; Kirk examined the burner, cleaned off as much grease as he could remove, and the household was instructed to stop using that burner until an in-house maintenance worker could examine and repair it.^[2]

Evidence at Kirk's first trial and Kirk's own account suggested that after a day and evening of drinking with friends, including the purchase of at least two pint bottles of Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum, Kirk and his girlfriend argued and the friends went home. Early the next morning, a fire started in Kirk's kitchen which killed three other inhabitants of the apartment building and injured 14.^[1]

Kirk was questioned that day by the police^[2], was released in the afternoon and consulted a lawyer^[1] before returning the next day voluntarily. During a videotaped interview that lasted more than five hours he admitted pouring rum on the burner which started the fire that consumed the apartment building.^[1] He first denied having started the fire, then said he was trying to light a cigarette on the electric burner when rum spilled onto it from a bottle he was carrying.^[3]

[edit] Trial and verdict

At the time of trial in 1997, newspaper accounts reported the following information:

The 16-year-old testified that Kirk had recently threatened to kill and/or injure the family.^[3]
Testimony indicated that Kirk had smashed his own prized grandfather clock immediately before the fire began.^[3]
Kirk's lawyers were quoted as saying that Kirk had been trying to destroy the alcohol that had fueled the couple's problems. In the newspaper account, Kirk's attorney quoted him as saying "I never thought this would happen."^[3]

During the trial, two pieces of videotaped expert evidence were presented, one from each side.^[4] A Fire Marshal demonstrated that a fire could be started by pouring Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum onto a heated stove burner, and an expert witness testifying on behalf of Kirk tried to ignite rum by pouring it onto a stove burner but failed.

The judge at the trial, sitting without a jury, found Kirk guilty.

[edit] Controversy surrounding the trial and verdict

Mark Kirk, after his conviction, brought at least four appeals based on varying grounds.

He appealed on the grounds that, during his videotaped interrogation, he had asked for counsel and that the police had not stopped questioning him at that point. In its decision,^[1] a higher court found that the sentences "I don't have anything to tell you" and "I can't. Just take me away, please. Take me away." did not amount to Kirk invoking his right to remain silent (and it pointed out that, in another case, the sentence "I don't think I should say anything" was sufficiently ambiguous as to not amount to an invocation of the right to silence).
He appealed on the grounds that his confession had been coerced. The court, in its decision, considered the circumstances surrounding the confession, including that Kirk had consulted a lawyer the previous evening, and Kirk's age, education, and prior police contacts.^[1]
He appealed on the grounds of the impossibility defense, that it was impossible to ignite a fire by pouring Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum on a heated electric burner and that the videotaped testimony and demonstration by the Fire Marshal must be "falsified". Similarly, he appealed on the basis that his counsel failed to request that the judge recuse himself for bias after having first consulted with defense counsel, then having an ex parte communication with the Fire Marshal in open court.^[1] The appeal court found no evidence of bias. It found that Kirk had relied for his contention of the impossibility of ignition upon "two unnamed experts, information from television cooking shows and common knowledge regarding the color of the flames."^[1]
Another later appeal was based on a videotaped demonstration by another expert, forensic analyst John Lentini, and two grounds arising therefrom. In the Lentini videotape, this analyst found it impossible to ignite a fire by pouring Captain Morgan's Spiced Rum onto a stove's burner (see video at ^[5]). The first ground suggested that the Lentini video demonstrated "junk science" and "perjured testimony" and thus denied him the right to a fair trial. The second ground suggested that, at the trial, Kirk's attorney had been incompetent for not having presented a forensic expert with credentials as strong as Lentini's and thus Kirk's defense had been "unqualified and incompetent". The court found that, if the Lentini videotape had been shown at the trial, there would not have been a different result -- the trial judge, in his reasons, stated that the defense video and the State's video had "negated each other".^[5], and the reviewing court found that the State's video and the Lentini video would also have negated each other for the same reasons cited by the trial judge. The higher court also ruled against the grounds of incompetent defense because the videotaped demonstrations had not been the only evidence leading to conviction, and that there were ample amounts of other evidence (including the videotaped confession) presented at trial that would have led to a verdict of guilty.
Kirk appealed on the basis that his videotaped confession had been extorted^[4] and as support he cites the impossibility of his having committed the act to which he confessed (as shown by the Lentini video); his reasoning is that a confession to acts which were impossible must have been coerced. This argument was rejected for the same reasons as cited in the previous point, namely that the two videotaped demonstrations had canceled each other out and thus did not contribute to the trial judge having found the defendant guilty. Essentially, the trial judge did not believe or disbelieve the videos and so the possibility or impossibility of igniting the fire was not a factor in the verdict, and therefore impossibility cannot be cited as a grounds for believing that the confession must have been coerced.

[edit] Present status

Supporters of Mark Kirk have established a website to display his claims to innocence and the evidence which purports to support them.^[6] As of May 14, 2007, his most recent appeals have been denied.^[4]