Hotel Arson Suspect Guilty Of Reduced Charge

A Circuit Court jury of 10 women and two men deliberated less than two hours Wednesday bef ore returning a guilty verdict against a Tennessee man charged with setting a fire in a downtown hotel. However the nature of the verdict in the case of 38-year-old Robert Trotter reflected the lingering doubt Circuit Court Judge Ross W. Campbell had expressed with the jury absent from his court on ! Tuesday. The judge told Assistant Prosecutor Len Kowalski that the state had ïfoVproven the (Wbeyond a reasonable doubt but that fíewould permit ít to go to the jury for deliberaron. Trotter was arrested on án arsbn charge last February after a $300,000 fire swept through the seventh floor of the Ann Arbor Inn at S. Fourth Avenue and E Hurón Street. City pólice and Fire Department officials said Trotter deliberately set fire to a bed in his room in the hotel to get revenge on a night clerk who had refused his demand for liquor. When he instructed the jury Wednesday morning Judge Campbell pointed out that verdicts of guüty Of arson, guilty of a íesser cfiarge of negligent burning of real property or not guilty could be returned. When the jury came back into the courtroom Wednesday afternoon they brought with them a verdict of guilty to the "negligent burning" count. That charge is a misdemeanor while arson is a felony. , . Judge Campbell immediately sent'enced Trotter to 90 days in the County Jail with credit for time already spent there. Because the Tennesseean has already spent more than seven months in jail awaiting trial the judge ordered him freed. fter the sentencing Judge Campbell suggested to Trotter that he return to his home state where he claimed he wasu headed last winter prior to his arrest here. Trotter had said he was scheduled to enter a Veterans Administra tion Hospital in Nashville the week of the Ann Arbór Inn fire. Prosecutor Kowalski in his final argument to the jury given Wednesday morning said the state had proven that the hotel fire which began in Trotter's room could only have been started by an open f lame. He said the activity of Trotter in running down the hotel' s smoke-filled hallway poiinding on doors cannot be reconciled to the action of a person emerging from the effects of an epileptic seizure. In addition, Trotter's inconsistencies in stories he gave pólice and testified to on the stand cast suspicion on his credibilify, Kowalski told the jury. John Thompson, Trotter's defense counsel from the Public .Defender's office, used less than 10 minutes in his final argument, citing Trotter's history of epilepsy and the defense contention'that the defendant had an seizure as he sat on his bed in the hotel lighting a cigarette. The conviction means Trotter now has two criminal charges involving arson or burning of property on his record. The first conviction occurred in Tennessee, as did a second involving extortion. During the trial here Judge Campbell ruled that Prosecutor Kowalski could not mention the earlier arson conviction to the jury because state Supreme Court decisions barred such revelations. When he was ordered freed followirig Wednesday's verdict, Trotter told Judge Campbell said he planned to return to Tennessee. J