Timelines

By Lonnie Larson

Many investigators have had training developed by A T F or many state and local organizations exposing them to timelines.  Through this exposure, some have come to realize timelines as an important piece of the investigative puzzle.  Timelines have been used in law enforcement for decades in many high and low profile cases.  So I shouldn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to justify their importance in fire investigation, however; in the past 14 years, in my capacity as  Fire Marshal, I didn’t see them being used by private or other public investigators. 

With the current scrutiny of the "expert witness" and the levels s/he is being held to, one needs to document their case extremely well,  in the criminal arena as well as the civil.  I have found that timelines have greatly assisted in getting the prosecuting attorney in a criminal case on board and a great assistance to the civil attorney's.  We have to remember that a prosecuting attorney has many cases to work and an investigator must present his or her case in a very simple and fast format.  It's not that these prosecutors don’t want to work with us, but that fire cases are extremely complicated and most attorneys have had very little experience working fires. 

In most cases the Fire Marshal's office and law enforcement are not in the same office.  They have different duties and directions except for cases involving arson, so unless you have a law enforcement officer that has been trained in fire investigation techniques and is on scene at each and ever fire, the fire investigator will need to put together and present the fire case.  Determining origin and cause will not be enough.  Failure to succeed here, with a high-quality case presentation will terminate most fire investigations. Many law enforcement officers believe a fire is a Fire Department problem and many Fire Chiefs believe it's a law enforcement problem resulting in jurisdictional confusion the resulting effect is ... case closed.  Unless it is a high profile case, if you simply send an origin investigation to law enforcement to work,  most will be closed with little or no work being done.  it's not the law enforcement officer's fault, officer workload is a major problem, so they work the cases they have ownership in.  You must capture their attention and get them to buy into your case and invest themselves in it.  A timeline can greatly facilitate that.  It captures attention, it puts out the facts in a concise, precise and easily understood manner. It gets noticed.   It's your findings, it's your case, it's your work product, don't let it get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle.

Civil cases are different.  In them the client, or their legal representation, is coming to you with an event... it has already happened and it already exists so there is no struggle for it to be recognized.  Now it becomes the investigators duty to explain the 'event'.  A timeline becomes essential here because it demonstrates visually cause and effect.    Whether  the fire has been found to be accidental and a potential subrogation claim, or  an intentionally set fire, the "expert witness" becomes indispensable and a timeline becomes another tool in the investigators arsenal.  

After you have been in the field,  completed your origin investigation, interviewed your witnesses, made your diagrams, gathered other needed documents, determined the cause, completed your photo log and some reports, then you start to organize the information so others can follow your findings.  A timeline can be used to put all this information in a simple and organized manner.  Remembering that a timeline can be put together for each and every case but all the information in a the timeline must be documented in your case file. 

I realize this sounds like to a lot of additional work but remember, you are attempting to have your peers or an unbiased jury understand a very complicated chain of events. 

There are many ways to produce a time line, this can go from 3X5 index cards to a variety of expensive computer programs.  I use Microsoft Access.  I have built a simple database, a form to enter data, sequence the information by date and time and print a simple report.  Now if you have not use Access, it is not an extremely complicated program to learn and I will show you my data base structure. Feel free to use it, to change it in any way you would like. 

The File structure:    

Data entry form:

Reports:

 Or design your own.  Access can create your reports by using the wizard.  It also has wizards to create your forms for entering data.

 If you would like you can e-mail me and I will e-mail you a copy of the file,  Thank-you

llarson@larsoninvestigations.com

RETURN TO MAIN PAGE