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The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the conviction of former U.S. Forest Service seasonal firefighter Tamara Meredith for setting two 1998 fires in the Umpqua National Forest.
A Douglas County jury convicted Meredith of two counts of first-degree arson. She was acquitted of 31 other counts of arson stemming from a series of fires set in the Tiller area in the summer of 1998.
Meredith, now 40, was accused of setting a total of 28 fires on five different days between Aug. 1 and Aug. 18, 1998. Prosecutors claimed she was in debt and that she needed the overtime and hazardous duty pay she earned fighting fires. While under suspicion, Meredith allegedly set additional fires in anger at her accusers and to throw investigators off the track, prosecutors said.
Meredith served three years in prison and three years of parole. She finished her parole this past March.
The appeal centered on the use of an electronic tracking device placed on Meredith's government-owned pickup to trace her whereabouts. The Tiller District ranger authorized investigators to attach the tracking device on the underside of the pickup.
Agents flying overhead in a plane monitored the pickup and observed Meredith when she stopped in an open area in the forest near a logging spur. They saw Meredith squat down for about 20 seconds, rise and get back into her truck and drive away. The investigators saw an orange flash that widened into a fire.
Meredith argued before the Supreme Court, as she had both at trial and during an appeal before the Oregon Court of Appeals, that the use of the tracking device constituted an illegal search. She pointed to an earlier high court decision holding that the use of a transmitter on a private vehicle did amount to an unreasonable search.
In this case, however, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of Circuit Judge Joan Seitz to allow evidence obtained by monitoring Meredith's movements. The court distinguished between the circumstances leading to Meredith's arrest and in its 1988 ruling in State v. Campbell, which involved evidence obtained in monitoring a suspect's day-to-day activities. In the Campbell case, police illegally attached a transmitter to a car and then recorded the defendant's constant movements.
"Unlike the defendant in Campbell, defendant here was using a truck that her employer had provided to perform her work duties," Justice R. William Riggs wrote in a unanimous decision. "(The) defendant had no right to privacy with respect to that truck's location, and the transmitter never disclosed anything other than that location."
* You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@newsreview.info.
A Douglas County jury convicted Meredith of two counts of first-degree arson. She was acquitted of 31 other counts of arson stemming from a series of fires set in the Tiller area in the summer of 1998.
Meredith, now 40, was accused of setting a total of 28 fires on five different days between Aug. 1 and Aug. 18, 1998. Prosecutors claimed she was in debt and that she needed the overtime and hazardous duty pay she earned fighting fires. While under suspicion, Meredith allegedly set additional fires in anger at her accusers and to throw investigators off the track, prosecutors said.
Meredith served three years in prison and three years of parole. She finished her parole this past March.
The appeal centered on the use of an electronic tracking device placed on Meredith's government-owned pickup to trace her whereabouts. The Tiller District ranger authorized investigators to attach the tracking device on the underside of the pickup.
Agents flying overhead in a plane monitored the pickup and observed Meredith when she stopped in an open area in the forest near a logging spur. They saw Meredith squat down for about 20 seconds, rise and get back into her truck and drive away. The investigators saw an orange flash that widened into a fire.
Meredith argued before the Supreme Court, as she had both at trial and during an appeal before the Oregon Court of Appeals, that the use of the tracking device constituted an illegal search. She pointed to an earlier high court decision holding that the use of a transmitter on a private vehicle did amount to an unreasonable search.
In this case, however, the Supreme Court upheld the decision of Circuit Judge Joan Seitz to allow evidence obtained by monitoring Meredith's movements. The court distinguished between the circumstances leading to Meredith's arrest and in its 1988 ruling in State v. Campbell, which involved evidence obtained in monitoring a suspect's day-to-day activities. In the Campbell case, police illegally attached a transmitter to a car and then recorded the defendant's constant movements.
"Unlike the defendant in Campbell, defendant here was using a truck that her employer had provided to perform her work duties," Justice R. William Riggs wrote in a unanimous decision. "(The) defendant had no right to privacy with respect to that truck's location, and the transmitter never disclosed anything other than that location."
* You can reach reporter John Sowell at 957-4209 or by e-mail at jsowell@newsreview.info.
