Kristine Bunch was twenty-one and pregnant when she was accused of knowingly using an accelerant to start a fire in the living room of her mobile home, causing the death of her three-year-old son. In 1996, she was charged with felony murder and arson, found guilty, and sentenced to sixty years in prison. However, in 2012, the defense fought for her exoneration by exposing the faults of the arson science used to convict her. 

 

Seventeen years after the fire that killed her son, Kristine Bunch was finally released from prison. 

 

Kristine is not the only person to have been falsely convicted under invalid fire science. Seventeen people have been exonerated for arson cases since 1990 and over 30,000 individuals are currently incarcerated for arson, explosives, and weapons related charges. Undoubtedly, innocent people with arson convictions remain behind bars. 

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The question is, how did the arson investigators in Kristine’s case, and in so many others, get it wrong? 

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For much of early arson investigation, the fire community lacked a cohesive standard of care, leading to large discrepancies in opinions between individual analysts and departments. In 1992, however, the National Fire Protection Association published its first science-based guidelines for arson cases (NFPA 921), which standardized investigations, coinciding with decreasing arson conclusions. Previously accepted misconceptions, such that intentional fires are hotter, create different patterns, and are clearly distinguishable from fires beginning accidentally, were addressed and discounted. However, even despite these improvements, many mistakes still occur in arson investigations. 

 

One common misidentification in arson cases, the same one that led to Kristine’s wrongful conviction, is flashover, the growth of a fire from consuming an individual object to an entire room in as little as seconds. When a fire spreads this quickly, it can appear that there were multiple points of origins—a common characteristic of an intentionally set fire. Flashover can also give the appearance that the room was doused with accelerant. In Kristine’s case, expert witnesses claimed that she poured accelerant in both the living room and the bedroom to claim the life of her son. 

 

Despite the general acceptance of arson investigation in the public eye as well as the scientific community, arson science still lacks foundational validity. Meaning, this discipline lacks proper studies to show it to be both consistent (repeatable and replicable) and accurate. Because of the unknown error rate and flaws within this science, even arson investigators with years of experience are at risk of overconfidence and drawing incorrect conclusions. Moving forward, more research needs to be done to determine the validity of certain methodologies in order to prevent future wrongful convictions, like Kristine’s. 

Kristine, propelled by her own experience, now leads her Indiana non-profit, Justis 4 Justus that helps other exonerees get access to the resources they need post-wrongful conviction.