Jury Finds Man Innocent in Bombing

Former funeral director Scott Daley may have made it clear he hated the man who fired him from Curlew Hills Funeral Home, and he may have a motive to bomb the employer’s home last September, his lawyer [Bjorn Brunvand] acknowledged.

But that doesn’t mean Daley was responsible for the bombing, defense lawyer Bjorn Brunvand told a Pinellas County jury Thursday.

The jury agreed, finding the 33-year-old Clearwater resident not guilty of first-degree arson and discharging a destructive device—a quarter-stick of dynamite.

The six-member panel deliberated less than 20 minutes before rejecting the charges, one of which carried a mandatory 10 years in state prison.

“They were a good jury in the sense that although the facts suggested that he had all the motive and the opportunity to do it, there was no proof that he did, in fact, do it,” Brunvand said later. “There were some statements made in anger and frustration that he had been a suspect for six months.”

The explosion Sept. 16, 1992, blew out the window of the master bedroom in the home of Geren Rose, embedding glass in the bed and throwing glass and other debris into a bathtub 25 feet away.

Rose, who fired Daley from his job of nearly three years at Curlew Hills Funeral Home in May 1991, was not injured. He was watching television in another room when the nighttime blast occurred.

Daley “was obsessed with two things,” Assistant State Attorney Joe Bulone told the jury in his final summation Thursday. “He’s obsessed with getting even with Geren Rose, and he’s obsessed with quarter sticks of dynamite.

“On Sept. 16 those two things merged, and he got even,” Bulone said.

With no physical evidence or eyewitnesses, prosecutors relied heavily on Daley’s words and love of explosives.

Witnesses testified Daley didn’t like Rose before his firing and that his feelings soon turned into an obsessed hatred once he was discharged.

Daley told former co-workers he once dreamed he saw Rose’s car, carrying his former bosses body, being pulled from a lake.

And a friend, Ken Johnson, testified Daley asked him to blow up Rose’s window for $50. Johnson said he didn’t think Daley, who had been drinking, was serious. Johnson and another witness testified Daley had tried to sell them quarter-sticks of dynamite.

Bulone also noted that, just before his arrest, Daley told a sheriff’s detective, “If I’m arrested for this, I’ll break out all of Rose’s windows this time.”

But Brunvand, in his closing argument, placed his hands on Daley’s shoulders and called him an innocent man.

Brunvand acknowledged Daley had the motive to bomb the home and that he had animosity toward Rose.

“He didn’t like him. He said some stupid things. But that does not mean that Scott Daley had anything to do with this,” the defense lawyer said.

By William Yelverton
[Tampa] Tribune Staff Writer