Jury selection was due to begin on Monday, November 2, in the federal retrial of Jonathan Rinderknecht, the man prosecutors say deliberately set the small New Year's Day blaze that grew into the Palisades fire — one of the deadliest and most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history. Rinderknecht, 30, returns to the U.S. District Court in downtown Los Angeles to face a scaled-down version of the charges after his first trial ended in a hung jury in late June.
Source: Reuters, Nov 2, 2026
Rinderknecht, a former Uber driver with dual U.S.-French citizenship, is accused of maliciously starting a brush fire on January 1, 2025. Prosecutors say that fire was quickly extinguished but kept smoldering in the roots of dense scrub, then re-ignited days later, whipped by fierce winds into the conflagration that laid waste to the seaside enclave of Pacific Palisades on January 7, 2025. He has pleaded not guilty, and the charges against him are allegations that the government must prove in court.
What happened in the first trial
The first trial lasted three weeks. Prosecutors cast Rinderknecht as a dejected loner who harbored deep anger at society, particularly the wealthy, and channeled that rage into an act of arson. The two opposing narratives of the disaster left jurors deadlocked 10 to 2 in favour of acquittal, unable to reach a unanimous verdict on any of the three charges. Judge Anne Hwang declared a mistrial.
Prosecutors then moved to retry him under a revised grand jury indictment. One original charge — setting timber afire — has been dropped, and the two remaining federal arson counts have been modified: one count is now narrowed to focus solely on damage from the initial January 1 Lachman fire, while a second count still seeks to hold him responsible for both the Lachman and Palisades fires, the Los Angeles Times reported. Rinderknecht would face up to 40 years in prison if convicted as charged under the latest indictment; the original indictment carried a maximum of 45 years. He has remained in custody since his arrest in Florida in October 2025, and he did not testify in his own defence during the first trial.
Source: Los Angeles Times, via Apex News
The prosecution case and the defence answer
Prosecutors say security camera footage and location data from Rinderknecht's cellphone show he was the only person in the vicinity of the January 1 blaze when it began near a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area. They have also alleged that while placing his 911 call, Rinderknecht asked the AI app ChatGPT on his phone whether someone could be found at fault for lighting a fire 'because of your cigarettes,' to which ChatGPT replied, 'Yes.'
The defence maintains Rinderknecht was wrongly accused. Defence attorney Steve Haney has asserted that prosecutors lack physical evidence linking his client to arson or any record showing an intent to commit arson, and he has suggested Rinderknecht is being scapegoated for failures of the Los Angeles Fire Department. The defence says the hilltop New Year's Day blaze was triggered by holiday fireworks, not by Rinderknecht, and that the massive Palisades inferno a week later was a separate fire set by someone else. Rinderknecht, himself a onetime Pacific Palisades resident, said in a court declaration filed last March that he climbed a hill to watch New Year's fireworks, saw the January 1 fire break out, immediately called 911 to report it, and remained at the scene until firefighters arrived, offering to help them.
A ruling that could shape the retrial
Before the retrial opened, Judge Hwang tentatively granted a prosecution request that jurors be instructed to disregard evidence about the adequacy of the Los Angeles Fire Department's efforts to extinguish the initial blaze, deferring a final decision until after the trial begins, the Los Angeles Times reported. She had earlier barred the defence from raising allegations of fire-department negligence, and she has ordered that there be no reference to the first trial during the retrial. Whether jurors may weigh the fire department's suppression efforts matters because the defence theory depends in part on the argument that the first fire was — or should have been — fully put out.
Background: the January 2025 disaster
The Palisades blaze erupted almost simultaneously with a second catastrophic, wind-driven wildfire in Eaton Canyon, about 30 miles to the east, which killed 19 people and ravaged the Los Angeles suburb of Altadena; fire investigators later concluded that sparks from an electrical transmission tower ignited the Eaton fire. Together, the two January 7 blazes rank as the deadliest wildfire calamity ever in Los Angeles County, surpassing the 29 lives lost in the Griffith Park fire of 1933. Rinderknecht is the only person criminally charged in connection with either fire. Nearly 7,000 homes and other structures burned in the Palisades fire alone, with property losses estimated at $150 billion.
For thousands of Palisades and Altadena families still rebuilding — and for a much wider California audience that now lives with yearly fire seasons — the retrial is the only criminal proceeding arising from the January 2025 disaster. Its outcome will turn on a narrow question: whether the government can prove the January 1 fire and the January 7 inferno were one and the same blaze, and that Rinderknecht started it.
What happens next
Jury selection opens the retrial in Judge Hwang's downtown Los Angeles courtroom, followed by opening statements and the prosecution's case. Judge Hwang is expected to finalise her ruling on the fire-department evidence once the trial is under way. If the jury convicts on the remaining arson counts, Rinderknecht faces up to 40 years in federal prison; if it acquits, or deadlocks again, prosecutors would have to decide whether any further retrial is possible or worthwhile. Awaaz Punjab will follow the verdict when it comes.