Fournier

The defendant was charged, under section 548 of the Penal Code, with the offense of willfully destroying by fire a certain building, with the intent to defraud the Palatine Insurance Company, Limited, of Manchester, England, a corporation, in which company the property was then insured. A fire occurred in the town of Madera on the 27th of July, 1895, in which several buildings were consumed, one of which belonged to the defendant, and was insured for the sum of $600. The witnesses all agreed that the fire commenced either in the building occupied by the Tribune newspaper, between which and the defendant’s building there was a space of eight feet, or somewhere along the line of a fence running northerly from the rear of the Tribune building some twenty feet to a shed adjacent to the dwelling occupied by the defendant and his wife. The defendant did not own the land upon which the building was, but occupied the same under a lease, and had built a small wooden house on the southeast corner of the lot, which he occupied as a saloon. On the rear of the lot, and some forty feet from the saloon, northerly, was the dwelling spoken of. Some of the witnesses—and apparently those who were…