By RONALD SMOTHERS
Published: October 18, 1995

The racially charged trial of a 25-year-old black man accused of burning down the high school in tiny Wedowee, Ala., opened today more as a Southern Gothic tale of loss and jealousy, revenge and anger, than as a saga with deep social and racial significance for the South.

The man, Christopher Lynn Johnson, is charged with burning down the Randolph County High School last year after its white principal imposed a ban on interracial dating and criticized mixed-race marriages. The principal’s comments laid bare a caldron of racial grievances and echoes of the South’s anguished past. The defendant is the son of one of the leaders of a black protest group in Wedowee.

In the prosecution’s opening statement, David Allred, an assistant United States attorney, depicted Mr. Johnson as an angry and bitter combatant in the dispute, intent on getting revenge by burning down the symbol of the town’s racial divisions. He said Mr. Johnson soaked a bag of earth with charcoal lighter fluid, broke into the school in the early evening of Aug. 6, 1994, set a candle burning on top of the bag and then returned home and went to sleep before the fire erupted.

He later bragged about it to others, Mr. Allred said, including his now-estranged wife, Janice, who subsequently became a Government witness. Mr. Allred said she tape recorded conversations with Mr. Johnson at the request of investigators.

“But you won’t hear him confess on these tapes,” Mr. Allred said, telling jurors that Mr. Johnson’s suspicions about his wife’s loyalty were awakened early in the investigation. “But use your common sense. There was a window of opportunity for Christopher Lynn Johnson.”

Ronald Wise, Mr. Johnson’s lawyer, countered, telling the jury of five white men, three white women, two black men and two black women: “This is going to be more like divorce court than criminal court. We have here a woman who is upset with her husband because he found another woman. She was jealous. She was mad.”