NorthwestJuly 21, 2000

Associated Press

BOISE -- It is time for Idaho to join a growing number of states that do not require a special jury instruction in cases based entirely on circumstantial evidence, the Idaho Supreme Court has ruled.

In doing so, the high court has affirmed the first-degree arson conviction of a Mountain Home woman accused of setting fire to a trailer owned by her estranged husband.

"The court emphasizes that the traditional protection afforded by an instruction on reasonable doubt makes an additional instruction on circumstantial evidence unnecessary."

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On April 24, 1998, the Mountain Home Fire Department responded to fire in a trailer occupied by Nellie Humpherys and her daughter. After the blaze was extinguished officials concluded it started in two places and a volatile accelerant was used.

Humpherys spoke Spanish, but little English. When the fire chief confronted her with the possibility of arson, she "started crying, blaming her ex-husband for starting the fire, ranting and raving, going on, and she was at that time kind of difficult to understand."

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