State v. Rodano

2017 Ohio 1034
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedMarch 23, 2017
Docket104176
StatusPublished
Cited by54 cases

This text of 2017 Ohio 1034 (State v. Rodano) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Rodano, 2017 Ohio 1034 (Ohio Ct. App. 2017).

Opinion

[Cite as State v. Rodano, 2017-Ohio-1034.]

Court of Appeals of Ohio EIGHTH APPELLATE DISTRICT COUNTY OF CUYAHOGA

JOURNAL ENTRY AND OPINION No. 104176

STATE OF OHIO PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE

vs.

DALE RODANO DEFENDANT-APPELLANT

JUDGMENT: AFFIRMED

Criminal Appeal from the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Case No. CR-14-590106-A

BEFORE: McCormack, P.J., E.T. Gallagher, J., and Stewart, J.

RELEASED AND JOURNALIZED: March 23, 2017 ATTORNEY FOR APPELLANT

Michael J. Cheselka 75 Public Square, Suite 920 Cleveland, OH 44113

ATTORNEYS FOR APPELLEE

Michael C. O’Malley Cuyahoga County Prosecutor

By: Kerry A. Sowul Andrew T. Gatti Assistant County Prosecutors Justice Center, 9th Floor 1200 Ontario Street Cleveland, OH 44113 TIM McCORMACK, P.J.:

{¶1} A fire erupted in appellant-defendant Dale Rodano’s residence five weeks

after he obtained insurance on the house. The insurance company and the police

suspected arson. A jury ultimately convicted Rodano of three counts of aggravated

arson and one count of insurance fraud. After a careful review of the record and

applicable law, we affirm Rodano’s convictions.

Substantive Facts and Procedural History

{¶2} On November 7, 2013, five weeks after Rodano obtained insurance on his

house in Parma, Ohio from Allstate Insurance, a fire erupted in the house around 2:00

p.m. Twenty-three firefighters in Parma’s fire department responded to the fire.

{¶3} Rodano claimed the fire started when one of his pets knocked over a candle

on a living room table while he was asleep in a chair in the living room. However,

Agent Joanna Lambert of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

(ATF) issued a report that opined that the fire was incendiary; State Fire Marshall

Jeffrey Koehn investigated the fire and reached the same conclusion.

{¶4} On October 28, 2014, the grand jury indicted Rodano of four counts of

aggravated arson and one count of insurance fraud.

{¶5} The trial was initially scheduled for June 1, 2015. On the day of trial,

Rodano’s appointed counsel moved to withdraw because Rodano was unhappy with

counsel’s performance. The trial was continued to January 19, 2016. While preparing

for the trial, Agent Lambert reviewed her report and, upon further review, she changed the conclusion of her report from “incendiary” to “undetermined” and issued a second

report concluding the cause of the fire was “undetermined.” Fire Marshall Jeffrey

Koehn, however, did not change his report and did not testify at trial.

{¶6} At the week-long trial, the state presented testimony from Rodano’s

acquaintance Lawrence Scott Allen, his girlfriend at the time Tracy Correll, his brother

David Rodano, his neighbor Scott Thom, whose house sustained damage in the fire, four

firefighters, two Allstate employees, and Agent Joanna Lambert. Rodano presented

three witnesses to testify on his behalf.

Trial Testimony

{¶7} Lawrence Scott Allen, an acquaintance of Rodano, testified that he told

Jeffrey Koehn, the state fire marshall in charge of the investigation of this case, about a

conversation he had with Rodano in the summer of 2012. In the conversation Rodano

entertained the idea of torching his house to collect on the insurance. Rodano

specifically mentioned a scenario where “a Christmas tree could conveniently fall over

and knock a candle over.” Scott Allen later did some plumbing work on Rodano’s

house. After the fire, he received a call from Rodano. Rodano told him the fire started

when he was asleep and one of the pets knocked over a candle and the couch caught on

fire. On cross examination, Allen admitted there was tension between the two after he

asked Rodano to file an insurance claim for an injury Allen sustained in Rodano’s home

but Rodano refused. {¶8} Tracy Correll lived in Rodano’s Parma house for almost seven years. She

moved out in the first week of October 2013 because of Rodano’s problems with alcohol.

She testified that they had candles in the house, but they were mostly for decoration and

lit only at Christmas. She recalled Rodano talked about fire, remarking that “people

light their stuff on fire all the time, Tracy. You know, they can’t [really] prove nothing

if you don’t use an accelerant * * *.” Before she moved out in October of 2013, she

asked to take her personal belongings, to which Rodano responded, “Bitch, I’ll burn your

shit down before I give it back to you.”

{¶9} Dale Rodano’s brother, David Rodano, testified that in September or

October of 2013, his brother Dale told him that “he’s going to be rich” and that “he was

going to set his house on fire and that he was going to tell anybody that asked that the cat

and the dog were running around the house and knocked a candle over and that’s what

caused the fire.” When David Rodano commented that the excuse sounded “phoney,”

his brother responded that “it doesn’t really matter because you’re innocent until proven

guilty” and “nobody would be able to prove that he burned his house down.” David

Rodano described his brother as drunk and angry at the time he made these statements.

Two weeks after the fire, Dale Rodano told his brother “not only that he was going to get

money from it, but that he had raised the payout on his insurance company.” As David

Rodano testified, “[Dale] was laughing about it because * * * it was like he tricked the

insurance man,” and he felt that he “was going to get away with this because the report

that the fire marshal[l] made said that the fire originated on the front porch, and [Dale] says that he knew for a fact that that was incorrect and that the fire started in his living

room.” David Rodano testified that his brother did not tell him how the fire started but

only that “he was going to tell people that the cat and the dog were running around and

knocked a candle over and that’s what caused the fire.”

{¶10} Four firefighters of Parma’s fire department testified regarding their

response to the fire and the scope, intensity, duration, and spread of the fire. The state’s

exhibits included photographs of the house in flames and the extensive damages to the

house.

{¶11} Although Counts 2 and 3 of the indictment alleged victims Scott Thom and

Norman Thom, only the former testified. Scott Thom was Rodano’s next-door neighbor.

He testified that around the time of the fire, he was recovering from back surgery.

Sometime in the afternoon on the day of the fire, Rodano pounded on Thom’s door. By

the time he answered the door, Rodano had already gone to another neighbor, Len

Ziegler, who lived two doors down from Rodano’s house. Thom saw Rodano on his

knee in the yard, yelling for people to call 911. The fire department responded within

minutes. Thom’s house sustained damage from the fire — its vinyl siding melted from

the intense heat.

{¶12} Two Allstate Insurance employees also testified. Their testimony indicated

that Rodano obtained a homeowner policy for his residence on October 2, 2013.

Initially, Tracy Correll was on the policy as well. After she moved out, Rodano made

frequent phone calls to the insurance company to ensure that she was removed from the insurance policy. She was removed on October 25, 2013. After the fire, Rodano

frequently expressed his frustration about the slow process of being paid on his policy.

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