Digital Extra: The Station Fire

Process slowed by foam testing, other questions

01:00 AM EST on Saturday, January 22, 2005

BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- The criminal case stemming from the Station nightclub fire won't be tried for at least a year, Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr. said yesterday.

In a chambers meeting with the media -- which followed chambers conferences with prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers, and later with civil lawyers who represent the fire victims -- Darigan said the trial could start next January, "if we're lucky," but that the pace of the pretrial discovery in the manslaughter case is going very slowly.

Prosecutors from the attorney general's office and lawyers for the criminal defendants -- Michael and Jeffrey Derderian and Daniel Biechele -- still haven't been able to agree on who will conduct further tests on the foam taken from the ruins of the nightclub, how much will be needed or whether the defendants will be allowed to do separate tests without sharing results with the prosecutors, said Darigan, who is presiding over the case.

The Derderians, who owned The Station, and Biechele, the former tour manager of the rock band Great White who set off fireworks that ignited the highly flammable foam at the West Warwick nightclub, are each facing 200 counts of involuntary manslaughter in connection with the Feb. 20, 2003, fire; all have pleaded not guilty.

The fire killed 100 people, and more than 200 people were injured in the blaze -- the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history. At least 440 people were inside the club when the fire broke out.

Lawyers for the defendants filed a motion Jan. 14 asking Darigan to let them have their own expert test some of the foam that lined the ceiling and walls of the nightclub -- and not to have to share the results with prosecutors.

"This is clearly work product and covered by the attorney-client privilege, and as such is not the subject of disclosure under the Rules of Criminal Procedure at this stage of the discovery process," the Derderians' lawyers, Kathleen M. Hagerty and Jeffrey B. Pine, argue in court papers.

Thomas Briody, lawyer for Biechele, has filed a similar motion.

Prosecutors are opposing these motions. Darigan said that he did not act on the defense requests at the chambers conference yesterday. He said he asked the defense lawyers to confer and let him know whether they would be willing to conduct their foam tests together and how much foam would be needed to do the testing.

The judge, who later met in chambers with about a dozen lawyers from both sides in the civil cases now pending in U.S. District Court, said he assured them that no further foam testing would proceed until they were given a chance to be heard on the issue. The victims' lawyers have expressed concern that there won't be enough foam left over from the criminal case for them to conduct their own tests. They are seeking a court order that would prevent further testing of the foam until they can be heard on the issue.

Darigan told reporters that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives recently completed some tests of the foam taken from the site but that the results have not been turned over to state prosecutors yet.

He said that over the past several months lawyers in the criminal case have been working on transcribing grand jury tapes in the case and that the transcriptions are almost done.

He also said lawyers for Biechele and the Derderians told him yesterday that they plan to file motions to dismiss the indictments that resulted from the grand jury proceedings, all the criminal charges in the case.

The judge scheduled the next conference with the criminal lawyers for Feb. 18.