Mother of Schenectady arson victims faces probation violations

PHOTOGRAPHER: Patrick Dodson

Jennica Duell is escorted from federal court in Albany in connection to a perjury charge over a fatal Hulett Street arson lin this file photo from November 12, 2014.

The Schenectady mother accused of lying to a federal grand jury investigating the 2013 arson deaths of three of her children is now facing criminal action on a second front.

Jennica Duell is to appear in Schenectady County Court later this month to answer allegations she violated her probation in an assault case that predated the fatal fire by nearly a year.

She was set to appear in court Thursday, but the case couldn’t go forward because she was not transported to the courthouse. She remains in federal custody on perjury charges related to the arson investigation.

Meanwhile, her attorney in the federal perjury case has filed paperwork claiming she lied to authorities only in response to police threats. The paperwork alleges police didn’t believe her initial account and responded by threatening her freedom and her ability to see her surviving daughter.

Duell reacted by telling them a story they wanted to hear, defense attorney Daniel Stewart wrote.

The probation violations both stem from the fire and subsequent investigation. Her probation officer cited the federal perjury allegations as one violation — not breaking the law had been a condition of her release. The other violation was for failing to participate in mandated grief counseling, according to the filing.

Duell, 26, was indicted federally in November for allegedly lying to a grand jury investigating the May 2, 2013, blaze on Hulett Street. She is accused of giving irreconcilably contradictory statements to the panel.

No one is currently charged with actually setting the fire, which killed David Terry and three of Duell’s and Terry’s children: Layah Terry, 3; Michael Terry, 2; and Donavan Duell, 11 months. Their fourth child, Sa’fyre Terry, then 5, survived, but sustained extensive burns and has been in the care of her father’s sister since her release from the hospital.

Duell and two others were accused in a baseball bat assault on a man June 26, 2012, near her residence. She pleaded guilty in the case in December 2012 in exchange for a sentence of six months in jail and five years’ probation. If she is found to have violated her probation, she could face further jail time or even prison time — possibly as much as seven years.

The developments in the federal perjury case included a glimpse into Duell’s defense strategy: that she was pressured into giving a detailed account that implicated her then-boyfriend, Robert Butler. Butler was initially charged with setting the fire, based in part on Duell’s account, but the charges were dropped a year ago, after new information surfaced.

Stewart wrote that the important question in the federal perjury case is why a mother who lost three of her children to an arsonist and nearly lost a fourth would lie in the investigation of that fire.

“The government’s response may well be that she was involved,” Stewart wrote. “I submit that an objective review of the evidence I have received to date points in a completely different direction and highlights inappropriate tactics of the [investigators] that likely led them down the wrong path.”

Stewart sought to have Duell’s detention hearing reopened after prosecutors corrected a minor detail in their arguments. The judge in the case has since rejected Stewart’s bid to revisit Duell’s bail status.

Federal prosecutor Grant Jaquith argued in his own filing that nothing substantive had changed to warrant revisiting the detention issues.

“It is difficult to conceive of perjury more serious than a person lying under oath about the arson homicide of her own young children,” he wrote.

Perjury allegations aside, Jaquith has also contended there is “significant evidence” of Duell’s “involvement” in the arson. He cited five statements Duell gave where she said she was present when the fire was set.

Jaquith told the judge in November that Duell’s account was that she encouraged Butler to confront Terry. That led them to the house and to Butler starting the fire, according to Duell’s account.

Duell claimed Butler asked her, as he was poised to start the fire, if she wanted to be “set free.” Duell responded that she did want to be free. She said she went along with it because Butler told her that her children would get out safely.

Stewart wrote that details in Duell’s story kept changing from telling to telling, including how Duell, Butler and a third person supposedly traveled from Saratoga Springs to Schenectady.

The “complete lack of consistency” in Duell’s multiple statements about the fire, Stewart wrote, should have alerted anyone that there was a substantial problem in her accounts.