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Type each question number followed by the answer. Example: 1. ____. Do not cut and paste the questions themselves.
Emerson Johnson has retained your firm to represent him on arson charges in a Maryland circuit court. Prior to a week before the fire, Johnson was employed by the management of an apartment complex as a grounds custodian. He had worked there for seven years and had even received annual bonuses for his work. However, Johnson had become opiate dependent on pain killers after pulling his back trying to pull a back hoe out of a ditch at the complex. As a result, he started coming in late or missing work altogether. After multiple warnings, he was finally fired. On the night of the fire, Johnson was in a depressed mood over his termination. He went to the complex, poured gasoline under the downstairs window of Apartment 500-A, which was in a building that had six apartment units, and tossed a match onto the gasoline, which was unleaded gas he had procured from a lawn mower. Apartment 500-A, which was leased by the son of the supervisor who had fired Johnson, and the apartment next to it (Apartment 300-B) and the apartment immediately above it (Apartment 500-E) all suffered damage from the fire. Johnson is charged with three separate counts of arson for the damage he inflicted on Apartments 500-A, 500-B, and 500-E.
1. Johnson does not understand why he’s charged with three counts of arson when he only set one of the apartments on fire. Your supervisory attorney wants to know if the state has sound authority for charging a defendant with multiple counts of arson when the defendant only set the fire to one apartment. Write a research plan on how you would go about researching this issue. Your answer should be 8-10 sentences long. Use the factors in the Research Plan IN as a guide. (30 points)
2. When clients tell their stories, it may sometimes be a challenge to distill the information needed to begin your research. Some facts that may be presented in a client interview or transcript may be relevant to the issue you have been asked to research, while some facts may be legally unimportant to that issue. Provide three facts that are relevant to our issue and three facts that are legally unimportant to our issue. Briefly explain your answers. (20 points)
3. Brief Richmond v. State, which is available on Westlaw at 326 Md. 257. Provide the full and complete Bluebook citation (which means regional citation only). Then, in your own words, provide the relevant facts, identify the legal issue in the case, state the court’s conclusion as to that issue, and state the legal reasons or rationale for the court’s conclusion. (50 points)
