Confession tossed for Forest Service coercion tactics Agents with the U.S. Forest Service broke an accused Cherokee National Forest arsonist's spirit to glean a confession too tainted to be used against him, a judge ruled Monday. In a massive 65-page ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton painstakingly painted the line between investigative creativity and police coercion. He then opined that forestry agents employing what has been dubbed by defense attorney Gregory P. Isaacs as the "Save Jane" ruse stepped over it in the case of alleged firebug John Wesley Irons. "The court finds that in this case law enforcement took their ruse too far," Guyton ruled. In his ruling, Guyton tossed out as evidence against Irons his alleged confession to setting hundreds of fires in the Coker Creek community in Monroe County and surrounding Cherokee National Forest. In so doing, he backed Isaacs' assertion Irons rattled off an involuntary confession to protect the women he loved - his estranged wife and U.S. Forest Service Agent Jane Wright. Irons allegedly told forestry agents his compulsion to set fires began when he was a teenager. Now 61, Irons allegedly admitted torching woods using candles and setting ablaze structures including the home of a U.S. Forest Service agent who was inside with his family at the time. But Guyton questioned just how "voluntary" that statement was given that it was gleaned when a "distraught" Irons lay handcuffed beside Wright, also handcuffed as part of a fake arrest, and murmured words of "unrequited" love, unaware he was being tricked into believing his confession would set her free....