latisha-smallwood

Letitia Smallwood, right, has spent the past four decades in prison, convicted of setting an August 1972 fire, left, that killed two people in Carlisle. A hearing will be held on Monday in Cumberland County Court as part of an appeal that argues the fire science used to convict Smallwood, now 62, was fundamentally flawed.

(Submitted photos)

It was 2:54 a.m. on Aug. 29, 1972, when sirens screamed across Carlisle. In an old theater in the town's center, one of the worst fires in the area's history was beginning to take hold.

A crowd watched until sunrise as firefighters fought the blaze. But it was not enough to save the historic building or two people living in apartments above it: 26-year-old Steven Johnson was burned alive. Another resident, 23-year-old Paula Wagner, would die a day later from injuries she suffered jumping from the building's third floor.

State police quickly pieced together what they could about the origin of the blaze. An investigator determined the cause as arson. The police received a report that a local woman, 20-year-old Letitia Smallwood, had threatened Wagner's boyfriend on the afternoon before the fire.

Smallwood was arrested and, in a two-day trial, was portrayed as a jealous lover who would do anything to get retribution against her former partner. On Jan. 11, 1973, Smallwood was handed a life sentence for arson and murder.

After more than four decades, one of the most high-profile arson cases in Carlisle history is being reexamined. A hearing Monday in Cumberland County Courthouse is part of an appeal led by the Pennsylvania Innocence Project that argues the fire science used to convict Smallwood, now 62 years old, was fundamentally flawed.

"It's not reliable," said legal director Marissa Bluestine. "It's unsound. It flies in the face of everything we have learned in the past 20 years."

Smallwood is in the State Correctional Institution at Muncy in northcentral Pennsylvania. She has been incarcerated for 42 years – two-thirds of her life.

Smallwood's appeal is one of dozens of arson convictions across the country facing renewed scrutiny due to concerns about the methods used by fire investigators in the 1970s and 1980s.

In that period, many fire experts for police departments believed that certain burn damage, like patterns in wood and glass, showed an accelerant was used to start a fire. Fire experts now understand that those signs are incidental byproducts of the intensity and unpredictability of house fires.

Pennsylvania has had at least one exoneration based on new fire science. In an appeal that attracted national coverage, Han Tak Lee, a South Korean man, was freed in August after 24 years in prison. He had been convicted of setting a fire that killed his daughter in the Pocono Mountains during a religious retreat.

Nationwide, it's unclear how many people may have been wrongfully convicted due to faulty science.

"At any one time there's probably 20 to 30 appeals percolating through the system," said John Lentini, a Florida-based fire scientist who testified in Lee's appeal. "And as people look through the system, they are seeing more."

In Smallwood's case, the 1972 investigation by Pennsylvania State Police came to the conclusion that the fire was set largely because two witnesses described first seeing the fire in two unconnected places of the building, suggesting the blaze was started in two different areas.

But the Pennsylvania Innocence Project argues that the timing given by those two witnesses is imprecise, and that they actually saw the same fire. The organization further argues, based on testimony from a fire scientist in Maryland, that state police didn't successfully rule out accidental causes of the fire, such as an electrical fault.

"There was no analysis for chemicals, there was no analysis for char and burn pattern," Bluestine said. "That was it. Flat out incompetent testimony."

The Cumberland County District Attorney's office has filed a motion to dismiss the appeal, largely based on the grounds that it's too late for Smallwood to provide new evidence.

Letitia Smallwood 17 Gallery: Letitia Smallwood

Under Pennsylvania law, a defendant petitioning for a conviction to be overturned must prove that they couldn't have provided the same evidence at an earlier date. The district attorney's office argues that Smallwood failed to bring her claim in 1992, when new methodology was widely disseminated for fire investigations, or in 1999 when a different expert reviewed her case and found faults with the fire investigation.

"In essence the defendant cannot shop around for a favorable expert and claim it constitutes newly discovered evidence," the motion reads. "Therefore the defendant's position is untimely and her petition should be dismissed."

Cumberland County District Attorney David Freed did not respond to interview requests for this story.

Bluestine said her team rejects the DA's argument. She said Smallwood has done everything within her power inside Muncy prison to have the investigation in her case re-assessed, including sending more than 80 letters to various organizations over the years in search of help.

"She hasn't just been diligent," Bluestine said. "She's been extraordinarily diligent."

Monday's hearing in the Cumberland County Courthouse is expected to center specifically around the timeliness of Smallwood's evidence.

Should the appeal proceed, it has the potential to rewrite a notable event in Carlisle's modern history. The fire, which took place on North Pitt Street and is often called the "Strand Theatre fire" by locals, is remembered as much for Smallwood's conviction as the scale of the blaze itself.

"It ranks as one of Carlisle's larger loss-of-life fires," said Randy Watts, a local historian. "In terms of building fires, it would probably be one of the top 20 in the century for Carlisle."

But those who are most anxiously awaiting Monday's hearing are, of course, Smallwood and her family.

Lisa Smallwood, 59, Letitia's younger sister, said her sister's conviction in 1973 left her family devastated.

At the time, Letitia Smallwood was a student in Pittsburgh, studying to become a hearing disability specialist. She was on spring break in Carlisle during the time of the fire.

Lisa Smallwood described her sister as a girl who loved to sing, who was brought easily to laughter, and who was well-loved by those who knew her. She said she and the rest of her family have never doubted Smallwood's innocence over the past 42 years.

"That type of behavior was not part of her character at any level," Lisa Smallwood said, stifling sobs in a phone interview on Tuesday. "She was a happy girl, a fun-loving girl."

Monday's hearing comes at a particularly pivotal time for Letitia Smallwood. Over the past few years, the 62-year old has a faced a series of kidney and heart complications in prison. Lisa Smallwood described her sister's health as stable but precarious.

Still, Lisa Smallwood said, despite all her sister had been through, Letitia is more hopeful than she has ever been about the future.

"This is as close we have come to her walking out of the gate in all of these 42 years," Lisa Smallwood said. "We have been blessed with an extraordinary team and organization to take up her case and march boldly as they have through all the obstacles. We are blessed – she is blessed ­­– for this opportunity."