Michael Southall was convicted of attempted residential arson, aggravated domestic battery, and domestic battery after threatening to burn down his ex-girlfriend's grandmother's home and strangling both his son and the boy's mother on December 29, 2023. The charges stemmed from an incident where Southall sprayed liquid from a Kingsford Charcoal Lighter container on the home and victims before attempting to ignite it with a lighter during a custody dispute.
The Illinois Appellate Court affirmed most of Southall's convictions while rejecting his central argument that deputies violated his constitutional rights by destroying the container and its contents within hours of the incident. 'The fundamental fairness requirement of the due process clause cannot be read as imposing on the police an undifferentiated and absolute duty to retain and to preserve all material that might be of conceivable evidentiary significance in a particular prosecution,' Justice Anderson wrote, quoting the Supreme Court's decision in Arizona v. Youngblood.
The court firmly rejected Southall's Brady claim, writing that 'presuming favorability whenever evidence is unavailable effectively eliminates the first element of the Brady test and relieves the defendant of that burden.' Justice Anderson noted that such a presumption would 'improperly conflate Brady's disclosure rule with the separate due process framework, governing lost or destroyed evidence under Youngblood, which requires a showing of bad faith when evidence is merely potentially useful.'
Southall had argued that the container actually held water, not lighter fluid, claiming in his pro se filing that 'if it was [tested] it would have shown it contained water.' The case reached the appellate court after Will County Circuit Judge Vincent F. Cornelius convicted Southall following a bench trial in 2025 and sentenced him to 12 years for attempted residential arson and concurrent 5-year terms for aggravated domestic battery.
The court found no bad faith in Deputy Richard Williford's destruction of the evidence, noting his testimony that flammable materials were routinely destroyed 'because there was no safe way to store the container with flammable contents in the evidence vault' and to ensure 'no other evidence in the vault could catch on fire.' Justice Anderson distinguished cases where bad faith was found, writing that those involved 'intentional and willful' destruction of evidence 'contemporaneous to when they were subpoenaed by the defendant and with no indication the destruction was part of the police department's procedure.'
The unanimous panel also addressed Southall's sufficiency challenge, finding that victim Sarah Walker's testimony about her physical reactions to the sprayed liquid—including tasting lighter fluid, burning sinuses, and watering eyes requiring medical attention—combined with Southall's threats and attempt to ignite the liquid with a lighter, provided sufficient evidence of intent. 'The evidence at trial was not closely balanced,' Justice Anderson wrote, noting the consistent testimony of both witnesses and defendant's conduct 'inconsistent with spraying water on Walker.'
However, the court agreed with the state's concession that Southall's domestic battery convictions should be vacated under the one-act, one-crime rule, finding they were 'based on the same underlying facts as the aggravated domestic battery convictions.' The ruling leaves intact Southall's attempted arson conviction and his aggravated domestic battery convictions for strangling his 15-year-old son and the boy's mother during the December 2023 incident.