Fifteen years later, Oyler’s arson and murder convictions still in appeal

Death Row Appeal: Legal Battles Continue Over Esperanza Fire Convictions

In March 2009, Raymond Lee Oyler was found guilty of arson, igniting the Esperanza Fire in October 2006. The jury also found him guilty of the murder of five U.S. Forest Service firefighters. Three died at the fire site and two, including Mark Loutzenhiser of Idyllwild, were taken to the hospital where they died. Oyler’s jury imposed the death sentence. All the convictions and the death penalty were upheld in June 2009.

California law grants an automatic appeal to death sentence convictions and Oyler’s appeal is still pending.

Appeals in California death penalty cases proceed automatically to the California Supreme Court, pursuant to Article VI, section 11 of the State Constitution. The defendant’s attorney, either from the Office of the State Public Defender or a private counsel, is appointed by the state Supreme Court. The Attorney General represents the State of California.

In 2013, Michael Clough was appointed as Oyler’s attorney for the appeal. The purpose of the capital direct appeal process is to identify and examine errors of law appearing solely in the trial record and determine whether the conviction, special circumstance, and/or death sentence should be reversed because of those errors of law.

Clough filed the appeal in June 2016. Two supplemental briefs were filed in November and December of 2024 and focus issues letter on Jan. 24. The Attorney General’s Office provided responses and rebuttals to the Clough issues. The oral arguments were presented to the Supreme Court on Feb. 5. A decision is pending and expected in the next few months.

The 2016 appeal was 464 pages, and Clough raised many questions and issues regarding the trial and its process. The are several claims that Oyler’s “due process” was violated by decisions regarding appointment of his lawyers.

Oyler continues to claim that he did not start the Esperanza Fire. This is the most salient issue. Clough argues that the prosecutor, current Riverside County District Attorney Michael Hestrin, did not prove that Oyler started the Esperanza Fire.

In response to a request for comment about Oyler’s appeal, Amy McKenzie, Communications Director for the District Attorney’s Office replied, “Due to this being an active case, DA Hestrin cannot comment at this time. Feel free to reach back out once a decision on the case has been made.”

While there is DNA evidence of Oyler’s presence at two other fires which occurred in the Spring and Sumer of 2006, there is no substantial and definitive evidence that he ignited Esperanza and caused the death of the firefighters.

Clough also challenges the admission of several pieces of evidence, such as the Anarchist’s Cookbook, found at Oyler’s home

The sudden change of judges in 2008 and the failure to change the trials venue from Riverside County to another court are examples of procedural issues which affected Oyler’s right to a fair trial, Clough claims. Refusing to change the venue impaired Oyler of a fair and impartial jury because of how much news coverage and awareness of the Fire and deaths existed in the county because of its location as well as the firefighter lived locally and worked in Idyllwild.

In the conclusion of the 2016 appeal, Clough argues, “Even where no single error when examined in isolation is sufficiently prejudicial to warrant reversal, the cumulative effect of multiple errors may such that reversal is required.”

Another and later issue has risen that involves Oyler’s appeal. In 2018, the State legislature passed Senate Bill 1437, which amended the State’s definition of murder. Its intent was to ensure that accomplices in a crime in which a murder was committed were not charged unless they were personally involved in the act of murder. Simply driving a get-away vehicle or being an outlook was not sufficient to charge them with the murder committed by another person involved in the crime.

In anticipation of the oral arguments, the Supreme Court asked both Clough and the Attorney General to address this issue. There have been several lower court decisions on this issue before this presentation.

In his Supplement Reply, Clough argues that in 2009 the jury was not instructed about the difference between being an actual killer and involvement in a crime. The State responded that Oyler ignited the Esperanza Fire which caused the death of the five firefighters. No one else was involved and, therefore, he is guilty of murder.

While the Supreme Court decision on the appeal is pending, Clough, who was appointed as Oyler’s attorney for habeas corpus issues in 2016, also filed a petition of writ of habeas corpus in May 2019, which is pending at the Riverside Superior Court.

While direct appeal proceedings are limited to legal errors appearing in the trial court record, habeas corpus proceedings in California are limited to death sentences and include constitutional and statutory challenges based on facts outside the trial record, thus allowing for the possible admission of new evidence. The scope of what may be developed and presented on habeas corpus is determined by a thorough investigation of what might have been presented at trial had constitutional and statutory errors not occurred.

“Since April 2020 I have been litigating post-conviction discovery and have obtained thousands of pages of previously undisclosed documents and information including substantial files from the DOJ Riverside Lab,” Clough wrote in an email to the Town Crier. “Once that process is completed, I will file an amended/supplemental habeas petition including all of the new evidence.”

To obtain much of the previously unreleased evidence and data collected during all of the Banning fires, Clough has requested that the Superior Court order the District Attorney or Cal Fire to release the requested information. Three times, the Judge has issued orders requiring the agencies to produce the necessary files.

The result of these steps has produced, “a virtually unprecedented amount of relevant and exculpatory previously undisclosed material,” Clough wrote. Consequently, he believes the prosecution team (including Cal Fire) is still in possession of relevant and undisclosed material.

In the 2019 habeas filing, Clough attacked some of the evidence Hestrin presented as well as the lack of evidence for claiming Oyler was the single arsonist for more than 20 fires set in the Banning Pass area prior to Esperanza.

In challenging this claim, Clough prepared a declaration from a prominent arson investigator, Ed Nordskog. He was arson/bomb investigator with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department, Arson-Explosives Detail, and a full-time criminal investigator since 1990, specializing in arson/bomb investigations since 1997.

Nordskog has written five books, three of which focused on serial arsonists. Consequently, in a written declaration filed in 2019, he opined, “After reviewing the above-mentioned items, it is my strong opinion that based solely on the analysis of the incendiary devices charged in this case, a minimum of two different serial arsonists were associated with the devices and probably more than two.”

With respect to Clough’s challenge that evidence of another suspect should have been allowed, Nordskag argues that his review of the ignition devices and placement suggests a firefighter may have been one of the arsonists. In fact, the Forest Service and Cal Fire were suspicious of a Forest Service employee who had past charges of arson. Once Oyler was arrested, investigators stopped pursuing this link and Oyler’s attorneys were not allowed to introduce in during the trial as part of his defense.

Although the prosecution claimed this person was eliminated as the potential Banning Pass arsonist in early fall of 2006 (before the Esperanza Fire), investigators continued to track his travels again in the spring of 2007.

Prohibiting introduction of this possibility was particularly devastating for the defense when they found a fingerprint unlikely to be Oyler’s on one of the incendiary devices

“The jury was not allowed to know that someone else was involved,” said Mark McDonald, Oyler’s trial lawyer. “They were left with only Oyler did it or he didn’t.”

While lawyers await the state’s Supreme Court decision on the appeal of Oyler’s conviction, work continues on the writ of habeas corpus and other evidence not produced or submitted during the trial or its discovery phase.