COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) - A man convicted of setting a fire that caused $1 million in damage to the University of Missouri's Ellis Library has been granted permission by a federal judge to represent himself during sentencing and a possible appeal.
Christopher Kelley, convicted in April by a federal jury of two counts of arson, continues to maintain his innocence in the September 2011 library fire and one in a Stephens College building four months earlier.
"The worst part of this is people think I set fire to a library," Kelley told The Columbia Daily Tribune. "I would never burn books. I went in to look around. ... I just want you to know I've never randomly destroyed anything. I've never set fire to anything."
Kelley, who is being held at the Morgan County Adult Detention Center in Versailles, said his public defender, Troy Stabenow, hasn't been effective and failed to follow up on evidence investigations Kelley sought.
Kelley has been incarcerated since being convicted in April of setting the two fires. Investigators found a computer in his apartment from a Stephens building where a fire broke out May 2011, and he is seen on surveillance footage inside the closed library on the morning of that blaze.
He could face at least five years in prison for each arson count.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Matt Whitworth declined to assign Kelley another public defender Wednesday, and he granted Kelley's request to represent himself even though he advised against it.
Kelley said he would like a different federal defense attorney but could not afford one.
He questions why university police didn't keep and DNA test feces found in the library, and why a lighter found at the scene wasn't tested, either. He also said security footage at the library did not actually show him starting the fires, and that investigators did not retain footage that doesn't show his movements.
Stabenow, who withdrew as Kelley's defender Wednesday, said he and his team put 400 work hours into Kelley's case and that he is totally satisfied there is nothing else they could have done to get a not guilty verdict.
"It is not uncommon that clients who have the strongest evidence against them kind of flail around for someone else to blame," Stabenow said. "We try not to let that bother us."
Kelley was convicted by a jury because of "clear evidence," such as cameras showing Kelley carrying a pole throughout the library and going into a room where computers were found smashed with what looked like a pole, Stabenow said.