Kristine Bunch will get a new trial in the death of her three-year-old son after the Indiana Supreme Court refused to overturn a lower court decision.

Bunch was convicted in 1996 after prosecutors argued that she used kerosene to start a fire in her son’s bedroom. However, in March, lawyers with the Center of Wrongful Convictions convinced an Indiana appellate court that new fire science shows that kerosene was not used and there are other accidental causes that were not explored.

Her attorney, Ronald Safer, told a local news channel, “Kristine’s case bears eerie similarities to one that occurred in Texas in the early nineties involving a man named Todd Willingham. Mr. Willingham’s children died in a fire for which he was convicted of murder and arson, and he unfortunately was executed in prison before advances in fire science proved he could not have set the fire. We are grateful it did not come to that in Kristine’s case, and that she has the chance to right this terrible wrong.”

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www.ncip.scu.edu