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Sunday, October 25, 2009

Ind. Courts - "Arson science on trial in Indiana courtroom: Evidence challenged in 1995 conviction"

A long and fascinating story today in the Chicago Tribune, reported by Jared S. Hopkins. It begins:

Since Kristine Bunch was convicted of setting a fire in her mobile home that killed her 3-year-old son, she has spent more than 13 years inside an Indiana prison.

But even before the 1995 fire, advances in fire science began to reshape what we know about fire. It altered how fire investigators do their job, using a scientific approach to replace the commonly held theories they depended on to determine if a fire was arson.

In the process, attorneys began to review and challenge old arson convictions from across the country. In perhaps the most controversial case, a series of reviews of the case against Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas for a 1991 fire that killed his three daughters, found that the original investigation of the case was seriously flawed.

The same sort of review is playing out in the small town of Greensburg, Ind. Last week, a judge held a two-day hearing to decide whether Bunch, convicted in 1996, should receive a new trial.

Bunch's legal team -- attorneys from a Chicago law firm, Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions and Indianapolis attorney Hilary Bowe-Ricks -- contends that advances in fire science undermine the conviction.

"It was really clear to me after reading the record and looking at the science that she's innocent," said Chicago attorney and former federal prosecutor Ron Safer. "I've prosecuted arson cases. I know arsons. This is not arson."

William Smith, the Decatur County prosecutor who won Bunch's conviction, defended the original investigation and said the methods used were sound.

"What they're calling science is a random bunch of studies that are collected together to try to apply them to the facts," Smith said. "They're calling this new science, but it isn't. What they're calling new science is 'the scientific method' which is giving the same evidence new interpretations."

The 1996 conviction was not based on entirely on fire science. At the hearing, Smith recalled how Bunch's trial testimony that she couldn't enter the bedroom to help her son because of a shut door conflicted with testimony from others.

Bunch's lawyers hope that testimony from fire scientists and engineers will persuade Judge John Westhafer, who presided over Bunch's 1996 trial, to grant her a new trial. It's unclear when that decision will be made.

There is much more information in the Tribune story, and in these stories from the Greensburg Daily News, the first reported by Joe Hornaday and the second and third by Adam Huening:

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 25, 2009 08:57 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts