Palisades Fire Mistrial: A 10-2 Jury Forces a Retrial

Ten jurors said the man accused of igniting the most destructive wildfire in Los Angeles city history is not guilty, two said he is, and that split was enough to collapse the federal case.

A Hung Jury on the Largest Arson Case in LA

On Friday, June 26, 2026, U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang declared a mistrial in the federal arson prosecution of Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old former Uber driver accused of starting the spark that became the Palisades Fire. The 12-person panel, composed of eight women and four men, deliberated for roughly 13 hours over two days before reporting that it could not reach a unanimous verdict.

The split was lopsided in the defendant's favor. Ten jurors voted not guilty. Two voted to convict. The note the panel delivered to the court was blunt about why further deliberation would not help: "We have people on both sides that are dead set, unwavering and unwilling to change their opinion."

Judge Hwang accepted the deadlock from the bench. "The court finds there is a manifest necessity to declare a mistrial because the jury is deadlocked," she said, before dismissing the panel. The trial had begun on June 8, 2026, and included eight days of testimony. Rinderknecht remains in federal custody. He faced three federal counts: destruction of property by fire, arson affecting interstate commerce, and timber set afire. He was not charged in connection with any of the twelve deaths the fire caused, because the federal case turned only on whether he ignited the initial January 1, 2025 fire above Lachman Lane.

The Footprint Prosecutors Were Working Against

The disaster behind the trial is measurable in a way the trial itself was not. The Palisades Fire ultimately burned 23,448 acres across Pacific Palisades and parts of Malibu before it was fully extinguished on February 10, 2025. CAL FIRE's final report logged 6,837 structures destroyed by the Palisades Fire alone. Twelve people were killed. The blaze is recorded as the third-most destructive wildfire in California history and the most destructive in the history of the city of Los Angeles.

The economic tally is on a different order of magnitude than any single arson case. The broader January 2025 Los Angeles fire complex caused estimated total economic losses between $76 billion and $131 billion, with some broader regional damage estimates running as high as $250 billion to $275 billion. Reconstruction has been slow enough that the human scale of the loss remains visible: as of the mistrial date, more than 17 months after the initial spark, only 17 homes in Pacific Palisades had been certified for occupancy.

Against that backdrop, the federal government argued a single, narrow theory of origin. The fire that destroyed thousands of structures on January 7 was, in the prosecution's telling, the same fire that had been started by one man six nights earlier.

The Prosecution's Digital Web

The government's case rested on a chain of digital and forensic evidence. Prosecutors said Rinderknecht dropped off his final passenger of the night shortly before midnight on January 1, 2025, then climbed to a hillside above Pacific Palisades and used a barbecue lighter to start a small fire. That initial burn, the Lachman Fire, was brief and was thought to have been extinguished. The government argued it had not been. Embers, prosecutors said, smoldered underground in root systems for six days, until a Santa Ana windstorm on January 7 reignited them into the Palisades Fire.

To place Rinderknecht at the ignition site, federal investigators introduced cellphone geolocation data, Uber trip records, and security camera footage. They anchored that map with physical forensics: a barbecue lighter recovered from his car carried his DNA.

The government also introduced what it called motive evidence drawn from ChatGPT activity allegedly typed by the defendant. Among the prompts shown to jurors was the question, "Why am I so angry all the time?" and the search "lets kill all the billionaires." Other ChatGPT activity referenced Luigi Mangione and the home address of DoorDash CEO Tony Xu. Prosecutors used the material to argue what they framed as a "societal revenge" motive. ATF Special Agent Matthew Beals conducted a roughly eight-hour interview with Rinderknecht in late January 2025, and the government pulled from that session as well.

After the mistrial, First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli announced that the federal government would retry the case. "The evidence is strong that Jonathan Rinderknecht is responsible for igniting the fire on January 1, 2025," he said.

How the Defense Fractured the Chain

Defense attorney Steve Haney built his case around an alternative ignition source and a compromised crime scene. Witnesses called by the defense, including a firefighter who recalled hearing fireworks just before and just after midnight, plus two residents and a security guard who reported flashes and bangs consistent with fireworks, testified that pyrotechnics were going off near the trail at roughly the time of ignition. Partygoers and teenagers had been seen in the area.

Haney also pressed on the investigation timeline. The hillside above Lachman Lane was not restricted to investigators until January 14, 2025, leaving roughly thirteen days during which the site was unsecured. The defense argued that the gap stripped the scene of evidence that could have pointed to a different suspect.

The behavioral evidence cut hard against the prosecution's theory as well. Phone records showed Rinderknecht placed more than a dozen 911 calls from the area of the Lachman ignition. Haney distilled the contradiction for the jury in a single sentence: "No arsonist sets a fire and calls 911 for them to put it out and then waits around to be arrested."

That framing reached the jury room. Speaking publicly after the verdict, a juror identified as Syrena described why the ten-juror majority would not convict. "There was just not enough proof," she said. "I just felt like a lot of holes."

In a federal arson case built on circumstantial evidence, an unbroken chain of inference is the whole product. The defense did not need to prove fireworks. It needed only to make the alternative plausible enough that ten of twelve jurors could not move past reasonable doubt.

What the October 19 Retrial Will and Will Not Decide

A mistrial is not an acquittal. Judge Hwang set the retrial date for October 19, 2026, and ordered Rinderknecht held without bail until then. The same judge will preside.

The boundaries of the second trial will look identical to the first. Rinderknecht still faces only the three federal arson counts. He is not charged in connection with the twelve deaths or with the 6,837 destroyed structures. The government's burden, narrowly defined, is to prove who lit the first spark on a hillside above Lachman Lane just after midnight on January 1, 2025. Everything that followed, the underground smolder, the Santa Ana winds on January 7, the 23,448 acres, the leveled streets of Pacific Palisades, is the consequence the case sits on top of, not the conduct it charges.

The physical record of the Palisades Fire is settled. The legal record of how it began is not.

Sources

• PBS NewsHour, Mistrial declared after jury deadlocks in Palisades Fire arson trial
• NBC Los Angeles, Juror explains Palisades arson trial decision
• ABC7, Deadlocked jury in Palisades Fire trial
• CAL FIRE, Palisades Fire incident final report