A judge set a schedule for pretrial hearings for Jonathan Rinderknecht. Eric Leonard reports for the NBC4 News at 4 p.m. on Thursday, July 16, 2026.
Jonathan Rinderknecht returned to a downtown Los Angeles courtroom Thursday as the judge overseeing his upcoming retrial on arson charges tied to the January 2025 wildfires in the Pacific Palisades set a schedule for pretrial motions, briefings and plans for jury selection.
"Very good, very confident," Rinderknecht's defense attorney Steve Haney said outside court when asked about his client's mindset weeks after a jury deadlocked in favor of acquittal at his first trial.
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WATCH HERE"We have a new trial date in October, and we're looking forward to it," Haney said.
Prosecutors told U.S. District Court Judge Anne Hwang they expect to present a similar case when the second trial begins Oct. 19 but also plan to make some adjustments and may file evidentiary motions closer to the trial date.
"They'll be less weighty based on things that happened in the last trial," Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew O'Brien said.
Rinderknecht was brought to court in jail clothes and shackles. Haney said there was a miscommunication with the U.S. Marshals that caused Rinderknecht to miss the hearing that was originally scheduled for Wednesday and said his client never refused to come to court.
Haney said he planned to file additional challenges to some of the government's evidence ahead of the retrial, including one to try to exclude some of the text messages prosecutors attributed to Rinderknecht.
"We'll file a motion to exclude with some text messages that we don't believe came from his phone, that I don't think should have been introduced before the jury," Haney said. "We'll follow some motions to block some evidence that was admitted at the first trial."
Judge Hwang set the next hearing for Aug. 19 to discuss jury selection and questionnaires and Sept. 30 for argument on the motions.
Rinderknecht's first trial on a trio of federal arson charges ended in mistrial June 26 after jurors told the court they were deadlocked and unable to reach verdicts on any of the charges.
The jury foreperson said the panel was divided 10 to 2 in favor of not guilty verdicts on all charges.
"There was just not enough proof," said a woman named Syrena, who was juror #4 during the trial.
"I just felt like … a lot of holes," she said.
The U.S. Attorney's Office immediately announced that Rinderknecht would be retried.
He's accused of igniting the Jan. 1, 2025 Lachman Fire in the Palisades summit neighborhood that burned about 8 acres of brush, later causing the much larger Palisades Fire on Jan. 7, which ATF experts testified spread from hidden embers still smoldering underground from the first fire.
