In the early morning hours of September 11, 2006, a fire erupted in J.J.’s Pub, a bar in Harrisville, Wisconsin. The owner, 36-year-old Joseph Awe, was at home more than 30 miles away in Friendship, Wisconsin, and was awakened at 4 a.m. when a man who lived next to the pub phoned him to tell him about the fire. Awe was charged with arson in April 2007 after a police informant, Justin Kohel, told the Marquette County Sheriff’s Department that Awe had mentioned “many times” that he wanted to burn the building down to collect insurance. Kohel said that a poster depicting Awe and fellow soldiers atop a Humvee in Kuwait had been removed from the bar prior to the fire. Before Kohel testified at a preliminary hearing, prosecutors dismissed six traffic
