Any person who knowingly causes, procures, aids or counsels or creates by means of fire or explosion the damage or destruction of any property of that person or another with the purpose to defraud an insurer shall, upon conviction, be sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two (2) years nor more than twenty (20) years or shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars ($5,000), or both; provided, that if death occurs to a person as a direct result of the fire or explosion or to a person who is directly involved in fighting the fire or explosion, imprisonment shall be for not less than twenty (20) years.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 11-4-4
Arson — Third degree
Applied in 3 court decisions — leading case United States v. Velasquez-Reyes (2005)
Most recently applied in United States v. Knight (June 2010)
G.L. 1896, ch. 279, § 4; G.L. 1909, ch. 345, § 4; G.L. 1923, ch. 397, § 4; G.L., ch. 397, § 3; P.L. 1927, ch. 1043, § 1; G.L. 1938, ch. 608, § 3; G.L. 1956, § 11-4-5; P.L. 1980,…
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Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Rhode Island General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Rhode Island statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.