Cedar City 2019 New Year’s Eve arson case once again rejected by appeals court

Firefighters battle a blaze at a two-story home located at 1074 Mill Hollow Way, Cedar City, Utah, Jan. 1, 2018 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News / Cedar City News

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Court of Appeals has rejected prosecutors’ attempt to revive a years-old arson case out of Cedar City.

File photo shows firefighters battling a fire that caused heavy damage to a two-story home located at 1074 Mill Hollow Way, Cedar City, Utah, Jan. 1, 2018 | Photo by Jeff Richards, St. George News

A judge in Cedar City’s 5th District Court dismissed arson and fraud charges in 2019 against Clare Eugene Prisbrey, finding prosecutors had insufficient evidence to make him stand trial on the charge. Fox13Now.com reports in an order issued Saturday, the Utah Court of Appeals agreed with the judge.

“The magistrate adjudged this case to be one of those rare cases in which the State’s evidence did not surmount the low probable cause bar. And in this unique case, for two related reasons, we discern no abuse of the magistrate’s limited discretion in reaching that conclusion,” Utah Court of Appeals Judge Ryan Harris wrote, criticizing the prosecution’s case as “largely of innocuous facts coupled with unexamined supposition.”

In 2017, Prisbrey and his girlfriend were celebrating New Year’s Eve. He said he lit some candles by a Christmas village display set up in his home, then left the home to propose to her at a nearby Latter-day Saint temple. The home caught fire and was later deemed a complete loss.

Read the full story here:  Fox13Now.com.

Written by BEN WINSLOW, Fox13Now.com.

Copyright 2019, KSTU. A Tribune broadcasting station

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