Digital Extra: The Station Fire

The judge in the case says the documents cannot be made public because the state lacks resources to do so.

01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, September 25, 2004

BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Prosecutors yesterday turned over to defense lawyers hundreds of pages of documents, including a list of potential trial witnesses and a report detailing tests performed on foam taken from the ruins of The Station nightclub -- part of the pretrial discovery process in the criminal case against the owners of the club and a band member who set off pyrotechnics that started the deadly fire.

Lawyers for Michael and Jeffrey Derderian, the owners of the West Warwick nightclub, and Daniel Biechele, the former tour manager of the rock band Great White, were given the documents during a meeting with Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr., who is presiding over the criminal case.

The Derderians and Biechele each stand accused of 200 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Feb. 20, 2003, fire at the West Warwick nightclub; all have pleaded not guilty. The fire killed 100 people and more than 200 people were injured in the blaze.

The documents that were given to the defense lawyers were not put in the public court record, contrary to usual court procedure. Darigan told those gathered in his courtroom that because of the volume of documents being exchanged, "we don't have resources" to store them in the public domain. In April, he issued a gag order that prohibits lawyers from talking about the case, saying he wants to prevent as much pretrial publicity as possible so that an impartial jury can be found for a trial.

No trial date has been set, and it is unlikely that one will be scheduled until next year. After a closed-door conference with the lawyers yesterday -- which civil lawyers representing fire victims were barred from -- Darigan told those assembled in his courtroom that "we're still in the preliminary stages" of exchanging information. He said prosecutors want to conduct further testing of evidence and that the defendants' lawyers will be allowed to be present for whatever tests are done.

Some testing has already been conducted by the prosecution. An inventory of documents provided to the defense yesterday indicates that prosecutors have already had testing done on samples of the highly flammable polyurethane foam that covered the walls and the ceiling of The Station. Some tests were performed by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and some were performed by an independent expert, Joseph B. Zicherman.

Zicherman has a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley. The Web site for his consulting business, IFT/Fire Cause Analysis, says his group deals "primarily with the fire performance of building and consumer products" and that his areas of interest include "causes and the growth and spread of fires as well as the performance of materials . . ." He is an expert in the area of polymer technology, including coatings and adhesives.

The Station fire erupted after Biechele lit sparklers that ignited highly flammable packing foam that the Derderians had installed as soundproofing at their nightclub.

According to the evidence inventory, the ATF has tested some of the pyrotechnics recovered from The Station after the fire as well as "expended suspect gerbs" seized from Russell's NightClub in Bangor, Maine. A gerb is a small cylinder that shoots a shower of sparks. Law enforcement authorities have also questioned personnel at various nightclubs around the country where Great White played, according to the inventory of documents made public yesterday. In addition, among the documents turned over to the defense yesterday was a 155-page transcript of an interview of Biechele conducted by state prosecutors two weeks after the fire. In court yesterday, Darigan said that prosecutors are working out a plan to share some of the test results with lawyers representing victims of the fire in civil suits pending in U.S. District Court. Deputy Attorney General Gerald Coyne said after court that the civil lawyers would have to agree in writing that they would not disseminate whatever they are given -- so that pretrial publicity for the criminal case would be kept to a minimum.

The judge, during a brief open court hearing, also granted motions by the criminal defense lawyers to issue subpoenas for original audiotapes documenting appearances by the Derderians before the West Warwick Town Council, and for attendance records for the grand jurors who voted to indict the defendants.

Defense lawyer Kathleen Hagerty has said that the Derderians told members of the town council during a 2000 meeting -- nearly three years before the fire -- that that they were planning to install soundproofing foam at The Station as a way of addressing noise complaints from residents who live near the club. However, the foam was never noted in reports of fire-safety inspections that were later conducted by the town.

Jeffrey Pine, a lawyer for Jeffrey Derderian, said yesterday after court that a copy of the tape of the June 20, 2000, council meeting at which the Derderians appeared does not include whatever they said to the council members. "The copy that we have doesn't show them appearing . . . There's something amiss," he said. "We know they appeared on more than one occasion -- and we're hoping the original tape will reveal what was said. If not," he said, "we'll take it from there."