Transcript for:
Insights from Pat Andler on Fire Investigation

I'm going to introduce Pat, but first I want to introduce and make sure all of you know my colleague, which is Dr. Maddie Edelman is here. Dr. Edelman started the Seeking Justice, well, or was the originator of it, however we want to put it. We're in our 20th year of this particular program.

So you guys are experiencing the best of programming going on right now in the 20th year. So for, in terms of introducing our speaker, I want to introduce Pat Andler. He's a fire investigator with over 35 years of experience, having conducted more than 4,000 fire investigations, including residential, commercial, vehicle, and marine incidents.

His career is marked by an in-depth understanding of fire dynamics and evidence collection, making him a sought-after expert in the field. He's also served as a certified fire investigator and certified fire investigator instructor, providing expert testimony. in numerous court cases across the United States, which he's been talking about.

Pat's educational journey, congratulations, journey began here at Arizona State University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in justice studies. Additionally, he has over 650 hours of specialized training in fire science and arson investigation. In addition to his formal education, Pat continues to expand his expertise through ongoing professional development.

He's authored an arson investigator. textbook and has been featured in various publications and media programs, demonstrating his commitment to advancing the field of fire investigation. His extensive experience and educational background has solidified his reputation as a leading expert in fire investigation and consultation.

Would you give him a nice round of applause? So anyway, as I mentioned, I'm Pat Andler. I've known him for my entire career, adult career. I started out as an investigator. for Equifax Services back in the 80s, 1980, after graduating from ASU in 79. Interestingly enough, Equifax, as we all know, is a credit bureau company, one of the largest.

And they've been around for 100 years. But they had a division called Claims Investigation. And I was really fascinated by that because at the time, my goal, like many of you, I wanted to go to law school.

So I didn't have the money at the time. I applied at several different law schools. I even tried to get on with law enforcement, with the FBI, and there was a holding pattern.

I got to make money. So I decided to become an insurance investigator. And I did that for about three years. I was sent an approach by my manager.

At the time, I believe we had about 35,000 employees at Equifax working just claims investigations. So I was one of four that was selected. And I had an opportunity to go to California Fire Academy, different fire academies throughout the country for a whole year.

And let me tell you, that's fun. That's a lot of fun. Then after one year, my boss says, okay, now that we spent all this money on you, you now have to go out and employ fellow fire investigators and put together a unit. Why?

Because the insurance industry was getting beaten up on fraudulent fire claims, arson cases, vehicle arsons. And law enforcement, the fire departments, didn't have the proper training. This was back in the 80s, and we still see that as a problem. So I worked my way for about 10 years with different companies, national companies, international companies.

In 1989, I decided to start my own business, which is Adler Associates, which I continue to work today. So what we're going to do today is I talk briefly about NFPA 921, which is the gold standard, as we call it, for... fire investigation.

And we continue to use it. It is constantly being updated about every three or four years. It has to be. And what makes this interesting is this is what we call a peer review document. What does that mean?

That means guys like myself might disagree with a certain passage in that book or a certain section of it. And we'll write up and say, you know, I don't really agree with that part. So. The peer review consists of all the members, which is about 5,000 members, and we will put our input into it. Do we keep that section in there, or do we take it out?

And that's what makes it a peer review. Now, we do have a standard called NFPA 1033. NFPA, by the way, is the National Fire Protection Association, the largest probably in the world when it comes down to standards for fire safety. That's the guide.

NFPA organization is the one that says you are required to have smoke detectors in certain rooms. You're required to have certain kind of exits or door handles all over. So we rely on NFPA. continuously on all our litigation classes and litigation cases that were about them. So let me just kind of go through this and then as we see here this is fire investigation pretty simple process determining origin you gotta determine the origin of a fire right before you determine the cause and we have to determine the development of a fire or explosion that will occur.

One thing that is missing is what about responsibility? If a landlord does not put smoke detectors in your apartments and you have a fire and you're injured, doesn't that come down to responsibility as a fire expert? Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

So they're going to have to change that to show responsibility as well. So let's look at the next slide here. Bear with me.

And this is the definition of what we were talking about. The goal of an investigation is to arrive at accurate, accurate determination, right? We're going to show a case study shortly after this. I want you to keep in mind, did the Phoenix Fire Department do an accurate investigation? That's what I want you to keep in mind.

So let's look at the next slide here. Oh, got ahead of myself. here.

This is conducting the investigation, as we see here. Now, as I mentioned before, this is the scientific methodology. Everybody has got to comply with that.

All fire investigators have to. Why? Because if you don't, then it's not really scientific, is it? That's why we have to follow each and every step along the way.

In the PowerPoint that we're going to show next, the case study, we do that. Fortunately, Phoenix Fire Department didn't. That's what I want you to take a look at. I'm not here to bash Phoenix Fire Department.

I work them as a consultant. But you cannot shortcut an investigation where you're dealing with somebody's life that's looking at 20 years in prison. And that's why it's got to be accurate investigation. And as expert witnesses, this is what we have to rely on.

The degree of certainty is really important in our profession. Now, this is a case study. Take a look at that house. Doesn't look burned, does it?

What's interesting is... We were able to obtain photographs before the fire. Why is that important?

This house was owned by an individual named Don Phillips. Don and his wife resided in this house for over 20 years. Don was an engineer. He was on disability or a heart condition.

He pretty much spent most of his time at home. He was also a smoker. His wife worked in downtown Phoenix as a paralegal.

But we were able to obtain photographs. Before the fire, I'm not going to know this house better than Mr. Phillips or Mrs. Phillips, right? Nobody's going to know this house better than that.

But this gives us a layout of what the house looked like before the fire, which is really important. Now, also we're able to obtain photographs of what the front patio area looked like. You see I have the word point of origin? That gives you a clue right there, doesn't it, where this fire started at.

We also have what we call a significant amount of fuel load. In the back corner there, can everybody see that? It's an artificial tree, and that's going to play an important part. Does everybody see that over here? Let me walk over here.

So the back corner here is an artificial tree, and this is where Mr. Phillips would sit in the morning and have his cigarettes. actually smoked cigars. He would come outside, sit here, and occasionally he would, piece of paper, he would drop his ashes into that duff area.

We call it duff, which is artificial. So as we look at this here, these are all pre-fire photographs that we got from the Phillips. before the fire. Fire department did not look at these. They had no idea what the fuel load looked like.

They had no idea of the combust material surrounding that area. What do we got right here folks? An ashtray, right?

See that on the table there? We have an ashtray. Fire department didn't know that. So we pointed it out during the trial.

So as we look at the fuel load, we know now This is the initial field load, which is the artificial tree. We know that he's a smoker. We know he sits there.

Look at the extension in the seat cushion there. This is the front door. Field load is a wicker furniture, which is when subjected to flame, highly flammable, right?

It's a lacquer finish material. But as we go through, what we got, this is what the fire department saw. They didn't know what the fuel load was.

They didn't know that he was a smoker out front and had sat in that chair a few minutes before the fire started. This is what they had to look at. Now, what makes this case interesting is we did have two witnesses. One was a Southwest Gas employee, and the second person was a woman across the street, directly across the street.

This fire broke out about 2.30 on a Wednesday afternoon. And what they saw was a fire in the patio area. They also saw a fire inside the house, which would tell you you got two points of origin, right?

Would that be considered an arson fire? Yes, because the fire could not communicate. Do you have a fire inside the house or one on the outside? We're now starting to identify. are burn patterns.

See this here? We know that this is a rollout fire from the fires developing in the patio. Now we're starting to define what they are. You know that section up there? That point at 6.4,.1, 4.1?

Where does that come from? 921. Not Pat Adler making this up. It's saying this fire pattern It's one of 30 patterns that we recognize as a movement pattern. So this definitely tells us that this is something that we have to consider. And what are we doing?

We're now validating, right? We're validating our presence here. We have no problem?

Uh-oh. Let me keep going? Okay.

We also know that it's a heat intensity pattern, as we saw. This is the charring that we see on the inside door. You remember that planter? It was right there. See that protected area right there?

That was the base of the planter. And we're going to reconstruct this. That's what fire investigators do.

We reconstruct the fire seat just like it was before. So now look at all the deep-seated charring we have on the sides here. Now we start to examine further some of the products of combustion. This is interesting because this is a light fixture, right?

And we know the melting temperature of that light fixture was about 800 degrees Fahrenheit. But what's interesting, look at the glass. See the glass here?

It's intact, isn't it? See the glass here? Missing.

Look at the distension of melting here. That tells me that that light fixture, which is on the outside of that patio, was burning. what direction? From east to west, right?

Metals have a tendency to distort towards the source of flame, okay? So this is really an important piece of evidence. During the trial that I testified at, we actually removed this. We actually went in there and removed 22 articles of evidence.

And as I testify, we bring these items out of the box and we show the jury. Can't get any better than that, right? So as we see here, This fixture clearly exhibits damage on this side facing towards the west and we have less distension on the east side which tells us fire travel is from west to east, right? Then we look at other items. This is what we had to look at when the fire department vacated the area.

Now keep in mind that I didn't get involved to the case until a year later, okay? Mr. Phillips had already been arrested. was in custody, was in jail, had been released on bail, and the fire department had gone forward and got a criminal indictment against him, saying, sir, we believe you started this fire, we believe that there's multiple points of origin, two points of origin, according to our witness statements, and we believe you intended on burning your own house down.

So when I got involved, this is what it looked like. almost a year later now which is good because we now had something to work with didn't we it's not a blank slab of concrete that we usually look at but in this case here we're able to go back in myself and my team of other experts that i work with and we're able to reconstruct the scene we also once again start going into an fpa 921 right that tells us what we have to do That's our, you're going the wrong way here, Sean. Let's see here.

Misty pattern. What do we got going here? Here we go. Melting material. That's what I'm talking about on that lamp.

I can't. Oh, there we go. Okay.

Well, we also have our windows. See the windows here? Everybody see the windows on the sides of the door?

That's really important, right? Why? Because if the fire had started from the outside, is it possible the fire could have migrated into the house?

Why? Because the brooch breached through the glass. So that's really important, and we identify the glass windows there. You can see the remains of the glass here and here. Why the heck?

Bear with me. Okay. What the fire department said is, remember they said two points of origin?

That the second fire had started in the middle of the living room, right? At the time, the Phillips were going through a lot of clutter. and they had some boxes that were stored in the middle of the room.

They lived in the house for over 20 years. They were going through some of their children's stuff, putting them in boxes and shipping them off. So we had some fair amount of debris inside the middle of the room. What?

Fuel load, right? Well, this is interesting because this photograph was taken by a State Farm fire investigator that was working parallel with the Phoenix Fire Department, right? State Farm, obviously their interest is to... either accept or deny the claim. And they decided in this case here, that the evidence was overwhelming, that they decided to deny the claim, which did not allow the Phillips to about $800,000 of damages, including the content and the structure.

So, in this case here, this photograph was taken by the State Farm Fire Investigator, which we're able to utilize as part of our presentation, right? Because it's discoverable. What's interesting here is this is the inside of that door, and that's the outside.

What do you think burned longer and hotter? The outside did, right? Not this. No charring. You clearly see the difference in the patterns there.

By the way, this power presentation is what we presented to the jury. Okay? So keep that in mind.

And now we start to get into some really fun stuff. We call this... vectoring. You see the green arrows?

You see the orange ribbon? This is my opinion as to how this fire occurred, how the fire spread. We have the remains of the wicker chair that we located by the pre-fire photographs and the protected area there as well.

So we were able to present that and as we go farther into it, this is one of the windows. See the arrows and how we vector that? particular room.

That's from the inside. And of course, we're going to the 921, explaining that. I have no idea who that is.

Sorry, it's just me. Give me one second here. We're just trying to get Any questions so far? Yes.

Investigation be done by structural? Well, how would an investigation be done if there was no structure remaining? Good question.

Fire investigators, as dictated by 920, are required to what? Take photographs, videotapes, whatever they can. They're the ones that have to document their case.

I had a case not too long ago up in Denver, Colorado, where this individual was going through a divorce, and he decided to burn the house down to get back at his wife. And as a result, they want to know if we could defend him. If there's any defense at all, and after reviewing several hundred photographs, his testimony, we cannot recommend that we can't defend him. The evidence was overwhelming that this individual had started this fire at the end of the bottom of the stairwell and that there was no other accidental potential causes to it. And of course, when he had, you know, admitted to yelling out the second floor window, I didn't come to get me, you know, you policemen.

Which they did, they got him all right. We can't help him there, okay? This is before your time, but we had a real horrific crime called the Shapiro murders. They're a very prominent family in Paradise Valley. One was a doctor and his wife.

And I was involved and part of the defense team on that. So we had gone in after the fire department had done their processing. And as experts, we were allowed to go in there. And both couples were murdered and set on fire.

And interesting enough is we end up finding evidence that we thought might help our case. Well, it didn't because they ended up taking DNA from the evidence that we submitted and it helped the state. So those things, you can't expect, you know, the turnout and stuff like that. But usually 60% of the cases that we work on is for the defense.

I mean plaintiff and 40% is for defense work. Some cases, fire departments, law enforcement, ATF, they do a great job. But some cases they don't. We're out on this fire scene for three days.

Our department was out there for two hours. A bit different. Let me, I guess, can we go forward?

Let's try it. So this is right in the foyer area. See the table?

Hardly burned at all. Matter of fact, we got phone books on top of it, paper still intact. Now we look at the receptacle, not consumed. Receptacle is made out of plastic, usually. Baseboard's not consumed.

This is where the fire department said the fire started at. We believe it's not the primary source of the fire, it's a secondary package. Calcination, a definition where the fire is actually... burning the soot off the walls, which leaves this pattern.

Then now we're on the inside of the room. You see the vectoring we did, how the fire breached through that window and came into the house. Excavation. We started to exhibit some ceiling trusses being attacked.

interested in this wall because the fire department didn't realize. You remember the witness that saw two fires? What do you think she actually saw?

There you go, a reflection. When that fire was burning outside in the patio area, and she looked out her window, she saw the reflection of the one and only fire on the patio. How do we know that? Well, we were able to remove this very large mirror, and by taking it apart, we found out, we got to prove this, we found out that there are shreds of mirror, as well as on the floor, as well.

How does that support our theory? Pretty convincing, huh? So the witness, when she was testifying during the trial, said, I saw two points of origin. I saw a fire inside. and fire outside.

When we showed her this, she goes, I could be wrong. And she was wrong. Was wrong. So now we're attacking their theory that there was not two points of war, but only one. And one had started on the outside.

Remember those boxes I was telling you? We reconstructed and showed the boxes, the area rug. That's a fuel load, right?

And I'm going to show you how that fire traveled. The photograph to the left is what we saw The fire department working with, they didn't clear out the debris, did they? We did.

We cleared out all the way down to the floor. We not only had a chance to reconstruct it, but we dug out the entire floor surface. Now, what some fire departments use is what they call an accelerant detection dog. Phoenix Fire Department brought one out. And guess what?

The dog alerted. And they're trained, usually they're food driven. They're trained to put their nose down on the ground and to alert, to determine if there's any type of accelerant. Can the dog tell you what kind of accelerant?

No, it can't. But in this case here, they did take samples of that debris field on the left, sent it to a lab, but it usually takes, could be several weeks before they get the results back. Meanwhile, the fire investigator testifies. and a grand jury that our dog is the best our dog never lies that he can but he always is uh accurate 110 percent of the time and there must have been an accelerant in the debris field he never got the lab result findings back so the grand jury goes well you know he must be right i mean the dog looks like he's pretty smart so they indicted mr phillips without the lab analysis reports coming back, which is a huge mistake in this case. Are we following scientific methodology?

No, we're not. We're not. We're relying upon a four-year-old golden lab to tell you that something was there.

Guess what we found? In the debris field, we found lemon pledge. Lemon pledge has flammable products in it.

That dog alerted not on gasoline but on lemon pledge. That's what that dog alerted on. Another false indicator. This tells you how the fire traveled. From now we're going into the kitchen area.

You see that pattern there with the arrow? So what I'm doing is what? I'm literally walking you through this house with the arrows and by using our vectoring and identifying the patterns. Once again, we're showing the different patterns along the wall there. This is referred to as a movement pattern.

This is a well-documented pattern, how the fire is traveling into the kitchen along the south wall. No question about it. Fire patterns, now we're going into the kitchen area.

I kind of want to move this along because I think we're kind of running out of time here a little bit. Now, what's interesting is ventilation has a major factor in all fires, like I mentioned earlier today, right? Do you think this is a major factor? That when he left the house, he went out through that door? He's scared.

He knows he can't go out the front door because the fire's coming at him. So he goes out this Arcadia door in the back. Now, how do I know that?

See that line of demarcation? Can you see that over there? I feel like I'm ignoring these fine people over here.

See that line? Yep, that line of demarcation right there. What does that tell me? That tells me that door was open, right?

And that's how Mr. Phillips exited the house through there. What effect does that have on fires? That's quite a bit, because now it's drawing in air, right? It's escalating this fire from the front all the way through the house.

We took that, we actually ended up taking the Arcadia door in as evidence. And I stood there in front of the jury explaining what that protective marking is and why it was open. how it became open at that time.

Are we doing on time? Okay. Okay.

This is the other side of that Arcadia door. See that smoke? Right out of smoke right there? Thanks, John.

How else can that smoke get out there unless that door was open? It had to have been open. Did that accelerate the fire from one end of the house to the other? Absolutely it did.

Now here's what we're doing. Again, this is my hypothesis, that there's only one origin of this fire, not two, one, and that Mr. Phillips had been sitting in that wicker chair, smoking his cigar, his phone rang, who was his wife, he got up to go inside to answer the phone, and he discarded, accidentally, his cigarette butt into this chair. I mean into the artificial planter.

Sounds good, right? Now, how am I going to prove it? Can't. Yes, I can. I'm going to show you how after I get a drink of water.

We went out and bought identical artificial tree. And we set it up at my lab. This is our lab, testing hypothesis, which is just like what he had in the house. Discarded A.

cigar into the foliage. We see that clock in the background that was helpful because that told us time of ignition, time of fire spread. What's interesting look how big this fire gets that's what we call decay and now we're going to show you a video of this. So yes. Just out of curiosity what's the most like not widely known Method of fire examination that you use what we have to use scientific so I go from the outside inside Okay, I want to look up.

Let me answer that question. We look thank you very much I'll be here after the presentation too for any questions. So this is the test that we did. That's Pat with the cigar and That's our clock on the right and what's interesting. We never thought that this sake well, we thought it would ignite but not in such a short period of time.

And this ignites in about, I think, three minutes, four minutes. We want to expedite that, Sean, if we can. And all we see is a little smoke buildup, right? Smoke buildup. We're at two minutes, 38, coming up three minutes.

Oh, there we go. Now keep in mind that we had wicker furniture around that too, right? Is wicker furniture considered an increased fire hazard?

In this case, yeah, it was. And it gets bigger. We want to go to the animation real quick, Sean, if we can. So what am I doing here? I am now testing my hypothesis, right?

That a cigar can ignite this stuff and will spread to the artificial tree and spread to the other items located. We also did an animation. that shows, there we go, that shows the fire site and the patio, and we document it through our fire patterns, how it ignites the box through what we call rating heat, heat coming down, and then goes out through that Arcadia door.

So let me finish real quick because I've got about... Two seconds on this case and I want to show you a couple of other cases too as well. So I testified for two days. This is another video.

And watch this. Jury deliberated for two hours. Not guilty. They felt that the fire department and State Farm did not do a thorough, complete job.

Remember that mirror I was telling you about? That's a mirror reflected in the animation. There's a lawsuit filed against Mr. Phillips Insurance Company, what they call bad faith, which it was, and they end up settling with him for seven figures. Problem is, guess what happens, folks? When you're in the system, I mean system, when you're handcuffed, fingerprinted, mugshot, that's all over the network, isn't it?

And it took him a long, long time to get that off. Now you've got family members think you're an arsonist. You've got children that think you're an arsonist, grandchildren, neighbors. So the point I'm making is, before you go forward with any kind of criminal investigation, grand jury indictment, these prosecutors have got to do a better job of reviewing the material.

They have to, because there's so much liberty at stake. If we didn't have a house to look at, to examine, you'd probably be sitting in jail right now. So unfortunately, but it worked out this way.

Mr. Phillips is doing well. He's still alive, to my understanding, and still living in Phoenix with his wife. So there are two questions over here, I think. Do you want me to re-say mine? Sure.

I was just wondering, what are some of the not commonly known to the public methods that you use within your fire examinations? Well, we use accelerant detection dogs, which will be very helpful, especially when you have a larger structure. But the samples we collect, we send it to a lab immediately.

And the dogs can be accurate, but only can you admit it in the court if the samples come back, as we call hot, or they come back and support the... dog's actions. So I bring a dog in and I say, okay, here, you know, work this area here. We would take samples, send it to a testing lab, right? And if the samples come back for gassing, then we know our dog's working.

In this case here, there was nothing like that in that area. The dog got what we call a false reading, okay? And they try to admit the dog in as evidence.

I don't know how you do that, but they tried. Not going to happen, folks, without you. clarification of a scientific lab report. And I think there's another question back there. If there was like a fire extinguisher at the scene, like a fire, and it was shown to not would that like not help that harm them?

No. So the question was if there had been a fire and a fire extinguisher was not used. Kind of a gray area, you know, depends if it's your boyfriend burning up and you're standing, I really don't like the guy, you know, might be different.

But in this case here, no, there are no fire extinguishers. That's a gray area. It really is.

Because are you required by law to use a fire extinguisher if there's a fire? I don't know. I don't think so. It depends on the set of circumstances too, you know.

Yes, ma'am. I can tell you that we gave fire training here at ASU as employees and we were actually told. Yes, you can use an extinguisher, but you're no way obligated to do so. And if you feel at any part in danger, simply evacuate.

Yeah. There's no obligation for any person. Right, right.

Let's show, can we show the next one? The next case I have, this is a whole series of videos that were done by, I think, is this 2020? Or ABC News?

Anyway. This is the Barbara Sloan Carl Capels case, right? And I'll give you a little input on that.

I was also involved with these two cases. Both were arrested by Phoenix Fire Department. Both were exonerated up until about two weeks prior to the trial.

What we ended up doing is we were able to process Barbara Sloan's house like we did in the last case and show that there was only one origin, that was a vehicle that was in the garage, and that there was no... crime of arson whatsoever. We put together a really strong report, PowerPoint.

I suggested prior to trial that Phoenix Fire Department get their most experienced fire investigator at that time and have them review our findings, which he did. And he agreed with me, which is unusual. He agreed with me.

He said, you know what, Pat, you're right. This fire started in the garage. There's no evidence to indicate multiple points of origin. as what my colleague had said, right?

And I don't believe it's a crime of arson. So by taking that necessary step really was helpful. In the case that I just showed, Don Phillips, I'd also reach out to the prosecutor. The prosecutor, two weeks prior to trial, came back out to the house and looked around, kicked some ashes, said, Mr. Handler, you're totally wrong.

I got the best fire investigators in town. And I'll see you in court. Well, it didn't go well for him because shortly after that trial, guess what?

He got demoted. Yeah. It didn't go well, did it?

I don't know if you know this, but the first fire you were talking to us about, the Phillips House, you showed us the animation of how quickly that happened, and the beginning being about three minutes. But how quickly does it take for the rest of that fire to start? That's a great question.

If we would have done fire modeling today, Okay. because now we have the capability of doing that. I would say probably we know that he was on the phone for about four and a half minutes, five minutes. Keep in mind, he's in the back bedroom, right, talking to his wife. And by the time he came out, that fire had already breached through the window and already started coming into the living room.

That's why he wasn't able to escape out through the front. So the only means of egress, as we call it, was out through that Arcadia door. And then he ran around the front of the house. But yeah, I think we're probably ballpark. I think we're due fire modeling about six minutes.

Yes, ma'am. Those cases that they did, that they concluded wrong, like the wrongful convictions, were those because of neglect on procedures or because the police were intentionally trying to convict someone or not police necessarily, like somebody was trying to frame them? Right. No, that's a great question.

We're wondering to this day. I think what happens, and I do consulting work for several different agencies as well, I think it's a lack of... Knowledge sometimes a lack of overzealous prosecutor that is relying on maybe inexperienced fire investigators to lay this out and say absolutely we'll get a conviction. My problem with prosecutors nowadays is they're relatively young.

They're not seasoned attorneys yet. They need to go back and get what they call a peer review on these. critical cases like this, what I mean by peer review is there's a lot of experts out there that are willing to sit down across the table and say, hey look, here's your problems with your case.

Here's your problem with it. And even question your own investigators. Instead of going in front of a grand jury right away, you better cross your teeth, not your eyes. And matter of fact, I mentioned to Mr. Broberg yesterday, there's a case back in Chicago, Illinois, where an individual was sentenced to several years in prison, I think over 20 years in prison, DNA released him.

He then filed a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the state of Illinois, settled for $50 million. That's taxpayers'money, okay? So that's something that has got to be brought out, and that is these prosecutors have got to be held accountable. There's a question back there?

You know what? We're almost out of time, colleagues. I apologize.

Let's give Pat Sandler a break. Big round of applause and thank you. Thank you very much.