00:00:01
Speaker 1: Hi, guys, Welcome to an episode of Legally Brunette. I will be your host today Emily Simpson with Shane. Today we have a very special episode because we are going to focus on a wrongful conviction. We are going to interview Christine Bunch. So, Christine Bunch was a former client of the Center of Wrongful Convictions and she spent seventeen years behind bars in Indiana after being wrongfully convicted of setting a fire that claimed the life of her three year old son. And this happened back in nineteen ninety five. Her path to freedom culminated in an exoneration driven by the emergence of new scientific evidence and the discovery of an altered lab report. Currently, Miss Bunch serves as the director of the Indiana Innocence Project, where she utilizes her extensive national experience and policy justice reform and exonery support. Her leadership extends to several prominent organizations. She is one of five exoneries serving on the Innocence Network Executive Board and as a member of the executive board for Life After Justice. For over eleven years, Christine has been a dedicated educator for the Illinois Innocence Project, teaching law enforcement students and the general public regarding the systemic roots of wrongful convictions. Christine has successfully recruited and organized dozens of exoneries nationwide to share their experiences at law enforcement academies with a focus on concrete strategies to prevent future injustices. Her advocacy also includes a personal commitment to helping female exoneries access essential health screenings. All right, so we are super excited to have Christine Bunch here today with us on Legally Brunette. We're going to talk about her case, what happened back in nineteen ninety five, and then get into how she was eventually exonerated.
00:01:54
Speaker 2: Hi, Chrissy, how are you.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: I'm okay, how are you?
00:01:57
Speaker 1: I'm great. So I was going through your case. I was reading a lot about it. I think the best place to start because we haven't really told our listeners anything about what happened back in nineteen ninety five. So I'm sure you've shared this multitudes of times, but would you mind just taking us back to June thirtieth of nineteen ninety five and just giving us a little bit of background on what happened that day.
00:02:19
Speaker 4: So it was a normal day, for me. I had come home the night before from school, got my son from the babysitter. Tony and I had went through our normal evening routine and he had a lot of trouble.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Going to sleep, but it was really hot.
00:02:36
Speaker 4: It's the end of June, and he finally settled down and I woke up early in the morning and my first thought was, it's foggy in my house, and that didn't really make sense. Then once I realized I was seeing smoke, then you go into just sheer panic.
00:02:58
Speaker 3: You're trying to figure out where he is. He had gotten up off.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: The couch and went into his bedroom, so I tried to get in there, and there's fire in the doorway, and I quickly realized I'm not going to get in that way, so I run out. I'm screaming for somebody to come help me. I pick up his tricycle and I busted out the window and I tried to climb through and get him. I was unable to do so because the neighbors told me out and told me know it, I had to wait for law enforcement.
00:03:31
Speaker 3: When they got there.
00:03:32
Speaker 4: I mean, I know it was quick, but when you're in that moment, nobody could have arrived fast enough. In my mind, they went in, they got my son out, and of course, as soon as I heard that they had him, I was calm because I thought everything's going to be all right, It's all going to be okay. It wasn't until I got to the hospital that I found out he had died in the fire. And then at that point you're just kind of in shock. You just shut down, and it took, you know, a while before I was able to come out up out of that. I don't think it happened until about two hours later when the police detectives came in and told me that it was an arson. It couldn't have been anything but and of course at that point, all that grief turns to anger because you're thinking, who could.
00:04:23
Speaker 3: Have done that? Why would they do that.
00:04:26
Speaker 4: I didn't have any enemies, you know, I was a nobody. Nobody would want to come in and intentionally do this, so I expected them to investigate and find out. Instead, they focused their investigations solely on me. And at that time, I'd never had any.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: Trouble with the law.
00:04:46
Speaker 4: I'd never dealt with law enforcement, so I had no clue that I needed to be protecting myself as an innocent person.
00:04:53
Speaker 3: I talked to them.
00:04:55
Speaker 4: Five days later, I was arrested and charged with murder and arson. I went through trial. That was, you know, a joke I think for most women, because we're represented by men usually. And he told me, you know, don't look too flashy because they already think you're a loose party girl because you're a single mom and you aren't married. He said, don't cry because if you don't cry enough, they're going to say you're faking. If you cry too much, they can say you're faking. He said, it's just better if you don't react at all. He said, I think we can talk to them about you being cold versus you being an actress.
00:05:43
Speaker 3: And so I took his advice.
00:05:45
Speaker 4: I sat there, I didn't say anything, and I listened to people talk about things that absolutely weren't true. That there had been a chair shipped in the doorway of his bedroom so that nobody could get in there to rescue him. And then this atf chemist testified that he had found accelerant in his bedroom. My jury took four hours.
00:06:08
Speaker 3: They convicted me.
00:06:10
Speaker 4: I was sentenced to sixty years for murder, fifty years for arson and sent to the Indiana Women's PRISM, which is a maximum security facility in Indiana. It took probably six years before I was able to get an attorney to take a look at my case. Once she did, she told me she believed I was innocent. We just had to fight it. So, being in prison, I didn't have a lot of resources. I wrote to innocence networks around the country. At that time, Indiana did not have an innocence project, so I was writing to projects out of state, hoping they would come in and help. It took a while, but the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.
00:06:58
Speaker 3: Came in that time.
00:07:00
Speaker 4: I had educated myself on fire science, and I knew without a doubt that I needed to see the ATF report because in that report he had said to my jury that it could have been one of three accelerants. I knew that if he had really tested it, he had narrowed it down to what accelerant it was. So I shared all of that with the Nisons Project attorneys. The first thing they did was get the ATF file, where they discovered the report that had been presented to my jury, and then they found an unaltered report that said no accelerant had been found in my son's bedroom.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: I was literally dumbfounded when I was reading that that there was first an original report written where he had done the research and said that there was no accelerant used, and he gave that to the two investigators I don't remember their names, and then they I don't know what happened, but I am assuming there was some times a conversation amongst them where they said go.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Back and redo it.
00:08:05
Speaker 1: And then there was after the original report, then there was an official report release where he said there was an accelerant used. And the fact that there's these two contradicting reports that are out there, and the fact that they they met and conferred and came up with something that was completely made up is a mind boggling to me. The fact that they found that and that those two documents existed that were contradictory to each other is then that's mind boggling to me. What did you What were your thoughts when you found out that they had actually altered the report to make it look like there had been an accelerant used.
00:08:46
Speaker 3: I mean, at first your first thought is.
00:08:51
Speaker 4: Anger, anger that anybody in a position of power could do that to someone anyone. I think that's the hardest part about this is people in power can do things like this to normal, everyday people. Once that anger subsided, I expected to go right back to court and get released.
00:09:13
Speaker 3: It doesn't work like.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: That, right, So what was the next step?
00:09:17
Speaker 1: Once they're the innocent Center's representing you, you come up, you have the evidence. Then how long did it take to go through the court system until you were eventually exonerated?
00:09:28
Speaker 4: So the attorneys came on in early two thousand and seven. I went back to my original judge and prosecutor in two thousand and nine, and they presented all the new evidence. A lot of that was fire science evidence, because the things they had said to convict me were not true.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: You know, there is no.
00:09:51
Speaker 4: Indicator because there's a pattern on the floor that says it's arson or an accident.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: That was something that was believed way back when.
00:10:00
Speaker 4: Nowadays we have technology to prove that's not true. So all this new evidence was presented and the altered report my original judge and prosecutor took almost a year before they said none of that information would have made a difference to my jury. So then we had to appeal the process that was granted. Most people don't realize they pick one case out of one hundred to listen to. So I was blessed they took my case, they listened to it. Usually you get a quick response from the appellate court. It took them almost a year before they reversed my conviction and remanded me back for a new trial. And so I walked out of prison August twenty second of twenty twelve. I had been in there seventeen years, three weeks and a few days.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: You were in prison for those seventeen years. You know, first of all, I can't even imagine. I'm a mother, I can't fathom what you went through. Sorry, I'm getting emotional about your story, Like I just can't imagine more of a personal hell that someone could put me in. Then to lose a child, and then to be blamed for the death of that child, and then to be incarcerated, and then I believe you were pregnant at the time when you were incarcerated, is that correct? That's correct, and your child was taken away. So now you've lost two children, You've been blamed for the murder of your son, and you spent seventeen years in prison, and the fact that you were so strong to make yourself educated, to learn about fire science, to I mean, I don't know how anyone could have stayed in the state of mind that you were in, to be so powerful and to be so I don't even know what the word is but wrong, to get through each day and to make yourself I read all kinds of things you were involved in, ministry, you were involved in. What do you tell me what were some of the things that you did in those seventeen years?
00:12:08
Speaker 2: You did so many things.
00:12:10
Speaker 4: Yes, so I got an associates and bachelor's degree from Ball State University. I am a licensed cosmetologist, a certified paralegal, and a certified Vet Tech dog groomer and dog trainer because I trained dogs for nine years for physically and developmentally handicapped children.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: Do you think were those things that you were doing and all those things that you dedicated yourself to in the education?
00:12:37
Speaker 2: Is that what helped you get through each day?
00:12:39
Speaker 1: I assume that being able to try to be useful, to be educated, to learn all these things, to train dogs, to be involved in it. I would assume that those things allowed you to wake up every day and to continue on and to get through each day.
00:12:55
Speaker 4: Yes, those helped. But when I gave birth to my second son, Trent, and today is actually.
00:13:01
Speaker 2: His birthday, Oh that's great.
00:13:03
Speaker 4: My kid brother took him and so I saw him as often as he could get him there.
00:13:11
Speaker 3: And when he was younger that was every week.
00:13:14
Speaker 4: As he got older, you know, it went more sporadically because he had things to do. But just knowing that I had their support, that they were out there pulling for me, that was the drive always. With the education, it was a matter of I had felt so diminished when I went through court that I knew I was absolutely going to go in front of that judge again, and I wanted to show him what kind of a person I am.
00:13:44
Speaker 3: Who I am.
00:13:46
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to let him act like I was an an educated twit because I was naive and listened to my attorney and didn't say anything.
00:13:56
Speaker 1: Well, And I think it's also important that the listeners know that when you went through your first trial in June thirtieth of nineteen ninety five, I don't know if we said this before, but you were only twenty one years old at the time, which sounds like a baby. And I can't imagine grieving the loss of your son, being blamed for it, and then having to sit through court and having an attorney tell you what to do. I mean, no one in your position at twenty one years old would have been anymore savvy at that time. So, I mean it's so young, and so I don't know how you can even wrap your brain around what was going on at the time.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: You're still processing grief.
00:14:37
Speaker 3: I'm sure, yes, and as a mother, you'll relate to this. It's something that doesn't it doesn't leave.
00:14:48
Speaker 4: I mean, it's been thirty years since the fire happened and I lost Tony, and there are still times that I will wake up and.
00:15:01
Speaker 3: It hits me all over again. Then he's not there.
00:15:03
Speaker 4: Then I'm not going to get to see him, even after all this time. It's an ache that will never go away.
00:15:12
Speaker 1: Now, what's your relationship with Trent? Like, because I know you missed out on was he born while you were in prison?
00:15:19
Speaker 2: He was okay?
00:15:20
Speaker 1: And then how does that work? So you're pregnant when you're in prison, you give birth and do they just come and take the child away?
00:15:26
Speaker 4: Yes, they give it to your whoever's designated to take the baby. For some women, you know, it goes right into the system and it's placed with foster care. So I was lucky that I had family there to take him. And then of course I was also scared because I don't get to see them put him in their arms and know that he's okay and that he's with them. So as soon as I was transferred back to the facility, my brother came over into the visiting room to let me know that they had him and that he was okay.
00:16:03
Speaker 1: Now I know you've also been an advocate for women's healthcare in prison, because you went through a lot of things, and can you expand on some of the issues that you had and some of the healthcare issues.
00:16:15
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So when I came home, I wanted to be a mom again. That was, you know, high up on my list of dreams that I wanted to have one more time. So going in and trying to get pregnant and discovering that, you know, I should have been having path smears every year. That doesn't happen in prison. I received one five weeks after I gave birth, and that was it.
00:16:46
Speaker 3: So there were a lot of.
00:16:47
Speaker 4: Things that I hadn't been checked for I had never had a mammogram when I came home, and here I am, I'm trying to get pregnant, and I had to go through all these tests, and then I had to figure out what viruses had changed in the real world that I hadn't been exposed to in prison.
00:17:06
Speaker 3: And so you go through that whole process.
00:17:08
Speaker 4: I went through fertility treatments for four years. At no time did I realize that they could take my eggs and freeze.
00:17:17
Speaker 3: Them and I could wait a while.
00:17:19
Speaker 4: You know, I was forty when I came home, so there's a rush on things. They never told me that I didn't have to go through all that I could get an egg donor and I could carry a baby. So there was nobody there to really tell me what my options were. And all the tests they just scared me. Because I'd went so long without health care. I thought, oh, okay, it's because I'm healthy, and you know, they're not going to They're not going to do these things.
00:17:47
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I should have been having those regularly. I should have had a mammogram, I.
00:17:52
Speaker 4: Should have been checked up on so to go through that whole process, Plus I'm trying to rebuild my life, re enter society, connect with my child.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: It was just overwhelming.
00:18:05
Speaker 4: And now that I've went through all of that, you know that threw me right into menopause. I used every egg that I had, and so trying to figure out.
00:18:18
Speaker 3: What my body needs.
00:18:19
Speaker 4: Because while you're in there, you're not getting the best food, You're not getting vitamins, you're not getting minerals. So now I have a great doctor and she checks all the time, what are my vitamin levels, what are my mineral levels? Because as I get older, I don't have anything in reserve. I have to keep taking supplements and make sure I stay healthy.
00:18:39
Speaker 1: Did you ever end up having another child after leaving prison?
00:18:44
Speaker 3: I did not.
00:18:45
Speaker 2: You did not, So but you do have a good relationship with Trent.
00:18:47
Speaker 4: Now we have a good relationship. I mean, it's you can't ever go back and make up for that time, right, And I think between the two of us, we felt a lot of pressure to try to do that.
00:19:04
Speaker 3: We did counseling together.
00:19:05
Speaker 4: And just came to a point of we want to get to know each other where we are now. And I'm so passionate about wrongful convictions, especially when it involves women. I mean, there are less than four hundred women who have been exonerated out of almost four thousand on the registry, And of those seventy percent, there are cases like mine. It was an accident and they made it look like a crime, and these women lost loved ones. So I knew how vulnerable women were, and I couldn't stop talking about that. And for Trent, you know, when he sees me, I'm just his mom. When other people see me, I am an advocate, I am a justice worker. And so for him, he wants to separate himself. He wants to just have his relationship with his mom and not be involved in all the social justice advocacy.
00:20:18
Speaker 1: Did you ever receive any kind of acknowledgment or apology from the investigators ever or prosecutors? Because I was in my mind as I'm reading all about your case and I'm processing it, I'm thinking to myself that you spent what was it, sixteen years in prison, seventeen years in prison for something that you did not do, and these investigators manipulated information and evidence and then didn't have to pay for it, didn't have to apologize, didn't have to take accountability, didn't have to do anything. Yet you are the one that had to give up seventeen years of your life for doing nothing. And it's just I appreciate the fact that you have that you're such an advocate, that you have taken that because I would be so angry and so mad, and I'm sure you are, but that you've taken that anger and that and turned it into something powerful, and so I appreciate that about you.
00:21:24
Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
00:21:25
Speaker 4: And so no one apologized. Ever, you come out and you try to hold somebody accountable. The ATF chemist who had falsified the report and testified to that falsified report died a couple of months before I was released. So there's no way to hold him accountable because I have to prove that he changed that report with malicious intent. I don't know how you go about proving that somebody did something with malicious intent. In my mind, if somebody did something wrong, they're supposed to be held accountable, right, But we have protections in place, such as immunity, to stop people from being held accountable for what they do.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: Now, there was also someone that testified falsely. Was there someone involved in the fire department that they managed to manipulate into testifying that you had put the chair into the hallway in order to block the door so that people couldn't save your son, and that was not true at all exactly. Now, how did that come out? Did he end up admitting that he had lied about that?
00:22:38
Speaker 4: So now, when the attorneys got involved, they asked for all the evidence in my case, and I'm one.
00:22:46
Speaker 3: Of the fortunate ones.
00:22:48
Speaker 4: They had all of my evidence intact, one of which was a picture of the doorway of his bedroom. And so if something burns, it leaves a mark on the floor, you can see that it was protected by something. There was no protected area in the doorway.
00:23:06
Speaker 3: You could see clear through in there. There was nothing ever sitting there.
00:23:11
Speaker 4: So when he was questioned about it afterwards, he said, well it was it was smokey and I got confused.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Right.
00:23:20
Speaker 1: Also, you had a big accomplishment when you were in prison. You were the first female inmate to ever take the ls lsat at the Indiana State Women's Prison.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Now was that just part of your case?
00:23:33
Speaker 1: And getting involved and reading and being so educated on the fire science and all of that, did that push you into saying I want to get into Well, you took the LSAT was that with the plan of taking the bar exam.
00:23:46
Speaker 4: Eventually, absolutely I wanted to become a lawyer. I thought, that's you know, where I can put all this anger, all this drive, and I can protect other people. I had no clue that I was going to be so uncomfortable and have panic attacks going into a courtroom.
00:24:08
Speaker 3: Again.
00:24:09
Speaker 4: It's very easy to tell yourself that you know you're over trauma or that you've healed yourself, but when you go through something that's so horrific, that sticks with you.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: And the first time.
00:24:27
Speaker 4: I walked into a courtroom after that and I was assisting one of the attorneys that took my case, I had to leave. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't catch my breath, and I was like, you know, this is another dream that's going to be taken away from me. And it was my lawyers at Northwestern University that set me down and said, you can make just as much change in the justice system without becoming a lawyer.
00:24:55
Speaker 2: That's absolutely true.
00:24:56
Speaker 1: Now when I've been involved with the Innocence Project in San Diego for many years now, and I've met a lot of people that have been exonerated, and I would say a lot of the conversations that we have always revolve around what happens once you leave prison, because there's such a fight to get out of prison, and that's where the focus is, and that's where the stories are, and that's what people like to hear about. They like to hear how did it happen? How did you end up in prison? But then I feel like we don't ever talk about that transition of when you leave prison to be able to assimilate back into the world. And so I've tried to involve myself in a lot of ways to be able to learn more about it, to help you know, exoneries, you know, transition over into finding jobs and getting education and things like that, But what was it like for you specifically? So you're exonerated and then they say, Okay, now you get to go home, but you've been in prison for seventeen years, so you get to walk out.
00:25:55
Speaker 2: But then then what do you do?
00:25:58
Speaker 4: Oh Honestly, if it hadn't been for my brother and my son, I would have curled up in a room somewhere and never came out.
00:26:08
Speaker 3: I was scared.
00:26:12
Speaker 4: The Internet was just coming out when I went into prison, So I'd never been on the internet. My mobile phone was this big thing that you could get very far away from the base. I didn't know how to turn on the water in the bathrooms because nobody told me.
00:26:27
Speaker 3: They took the knobs.
00:26:28
Speaker 4: Away while I was in there. So everything was just very frightening, and I didn't know am I going to the right place and am I asking the right questions? And it's also embarrassment. I'm forty years old and I don't know how to do the things that people are doing now. Most people aren't talking to people anymore. They go through a self checkout, or they do things on an app. I had no clue what an app was. And I'd never had a card, a credit card, or a debit card. I barely had a checkbook. So the fact that people don't carry cash anymore. Everything's on a card or your PayPal, it took a lot to get used to.
00:27:15
Speaker 1: Were you able to find work? I know you managed to get all this education when you were in prison, So was that helpful for you when you were finally exonerated. Were you able to find a job and be able to support yourself?
00:27:27
Speaker 4: I was. Most people don't realize when you come home. If it's been over a certain amount of time, you don't get your driver's license right away, so I had to have a learner's permit. I wanted a job immediately, so I found a gas station that I could walk to and I started working there. It was just supposed to be part time work until I got my license. I think I worked two weeks and they offered me a position as an assistant manager. So I started training for management. And then when I got my license, I just still didn't feel comfortable in Indiana and I wanted to change, so I moved to Chicago.
00:28:12
Speaker 3: I got a job at River's.
00:28:14
Speaker 4: Casino as a security guard. They thought I had a knack for that after all that time in prison. And then I started working at Northwestern University.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: And what are you doing currently?
00:28:28
Speaker 3: Currently?
00:28:28
Speaker 4: I am the director of the Indiana Innocence Project.
00:28:32
Speaker 2: I love that. And what does that entail?
00:28:34
Speaker 1: So do cases come to you directly and you review them and decide whether to move forward or not? Or what is it that you do?
00:28:41
Speaker 4: So cases come to me directly, we enter them into a database. Because people are at different places in the process. So if somebody's at the appellate process, then we write them back and say, hey, you know, we don't look at this until after your appeal is done.
00:29:01
Speaker 3: So here's the paperwork.
00:29:03
Speaker 4: If you don't win on your appeal, go ahead and file your PCR so you can have it in and stop your habeas time clock. So the way Indiana is set up our intech process is about preserving people's rights because a lot of times people lose their habeas time clock because they just don't know. You need something filed in order to stop that process. Right, So we're hoping we can stop that process for people, follow them along and hopefully do something before their PCR is just kicked out.
00:29:37
Speaker 1: Now, is your case a case that people refer to as far as fire science and junk science? Because I know, i've I've I've researched other cases that have to do with junk science, Like you know, bitemarks are now considered junk science, and so how has the fire science progressed along that now it's considered junk Scien what they were talking about as far as your case?
00:30:03
Speaker 4: Oh yes, my case is one of those that they are referring to junk science. But it's also one of those cases where they talk about the new evidence that was brought in.
00:30:14
Speaker 3: So the big thing with my case.
00:30:17
Speaker 4: On the news side of science was that they had said that Tony had died a very horrible, painful death. But then we got a forensic toxicologist and she determined that he'd actually died of smoke inhalation, So he had gotten to a very high carbon monoxide level and by the time the fire broke out, he was already gone. He was gone when I was.
00:30:45
Speaker 3: Trying to save him, and I didn't know it.
00:30:50
Speaker 4: That doesn't signify an arson, and arson burns very hot and very fast and gives off low levels of carbon monoxide. But an accidental electrical fire, especially one that starts in the ceilings or the wall, they burn very slowly and smolder and they give off huge amounts of carbon monoxide.
00:31:15
Speaker 1: And that was determined in your case that it was an electrical fire, correct, and you had had electrical issues within that home before. Yes, what is it that you would hope people take away from your story in your case? I know that you are an advocate, I know that you talk about it, you put yourself out there. So what is your hope that someone listening to you or listening to this takes away.
00:31:41
Speaker 4: I think my biggest hope is always that someone will reach out and get a lawyer to protect themselves, no matter what the circumstances are, because a lot of times accidents happen, things happen in day to day life, and when the police come in and talk to you, you don't know what route they're going to take with a questioning what somebody else may have said, how somebody may be interpreting the evidence. So I hope that anybody that's in that situation would just go ahead and get a lawyer and make sure they're protected. It doesn't mean you're guilty, it doesn't mean you're not guilty. It means you want to protect yourself, right.
00:32:27
Speaker 1: And I assume at the time, when you were twenty one and they were questioning you, that you never, in your mind initially thought that they were questioning you because they considered you a suspect in any way. So I'm sure you were openly talking, you didn't think you needed an attorney, you didn't know that you should ask for an attorney, and then you end up arrested six days later. So I can only imagine that your takeaway would be to get an attorney immediately and to protect your rights. And I also we talk about this a lot on the podcast, that asking for an attorney doesn't signify guilt. It just means that you're protecting yourself and you're advocating for yourself.
00:33:07
Speaker 3: That's correct.
00:33:08
Speaker 4: And most people are afraid that it's going to be looked at like they're guilty if they ask for an attorney.
00:33:14
Speaker 3: That's not the case at all.
00:33:15
Speaker 4: They're just watching out for themselves exactly.
00:33:19
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you Christine for joining us today. I really appreciate you being so candid and open about your story and about what you went through, and I wish you the best of luck and happy birthday to your son Trent today.
00:33:33
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here with you.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you guys so much for listening to Legally Brunette.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: We appreciate it. As always.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: You can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts, so make sure you follow our feed Legally Brunette, and I just wanted to say one more thing after speaking to Christine Bunch. One of the things that I've always taken away and a lot of exonerated persons that I've had conversations with have always said that they like to put their stories out there, no matter how difficult it is, because everyone listening is a potential juror. So I just want to leave that thought with you so that someday, if you're ever in the position where you're on a jury, that you become a little more savvy, You ask more questions, you look into the evidence, and you just have an open mind about things. So anyway, that's just something to throw out there that you guys can think about and kind of swirl around in your mind when it comes to wrongful conviction. So, as always, thanks so much for listening to Legally Brunette, and be sure to tell your friends and family thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Hi, guys, Welcome to an episode of Legally Brunette. I will be your host today Emily Simpson with Shane. Today we have a very special episode because we are going to focus on a wrongful conviction. We are going to interview Christine Bunch. So, Christine Bunch was a former client of the Center of Wrongful Convictions and she spent seventeen years behind bars in Indiana after being wrongfully convicted of setting a fire that claimed the life of her three year old son. And this happened back in nineteen ninety five. Her path to freedom culminated in an exoneration driven by the emergence of new scientific evidence and the discovery of an altered lab report. Currently, Miss Bunch serves as the director of the Indiana Innocence Project, where she utilizes her extensive national experience and policy justice reform and exonery support. Her leadership extends to several prominent organizations. She is one of five exoneries serving on the Innocence Network Executive Board and as a member of the executive board for Life After Justice. For over eleven years, Christine has been a dedicated educator for the Illinois Innocence Project, teaching law enforcement students and the general public regarding the systemic roots of wrongful convictions. Christine has successfully recruited and organized dozens of exoneries nationwide to share their experiences at law enforcement academies with a focus on concrete strategies to prevent future injustices. Her advocacy also includes a personal commitment to helping female exoneries access essential health screenings. All right, so we are super excited to have Christine Bunch here today with us on Legally Brunette. We're going to talk about her case, what happened back in nineteen ninety five, and then get into how she was eventually exonerated.
00:01:54
Speaker 2: Hi, Chrissy, how are you.
00:01:56
Speaker 3: I'm okay, how are you?
00:01:57
Speaker 1: I'm great. So I was going through your case. I was reading a lot about it. I think the best place to start because we haven't really told our listeners anything about what happened back in nineteen ninety five. So I'm sure you've shared this multitudes of times, but would you mind just taking us back to June thirtieth of nineteen ninety five and just giving us a little bit of background on what happened that day.
00:02:19
Speaker 4: So it was a normal day, for me. I had come home the night before from school, got my son from the babysitter. Tony and I had went through our normal evening routine and he had a lot of trouble.
00:02:34
Speaker 3: Going to sleep, but it was really hot.
00:02:36
Speaker 4: It's the end of June, and he finally settled down and I woke up early in the morning and my first thought was, it's foggy in my house, and that didn't really make sense. Then once I realized I was seeing smoke, then you go into just sheer panic.
00:02:58
Speaker 3: You're trying to figure out where he is. He had gotten up off.
00:03:02
Speaker 4: The couch and went into his bedroom, so I tried to get in there, and there's fire in the doorway, and I quickly realized I'm not going to get in that way, so I run out. I'm screaming for somebody to come help me. I pick up his tricycle and I busted out the window and I tried to climb through and get him. I was unable to do so because the neighbors told me out and told me know it, I had to wait for law enforcement.
00:03:31
Speaker 3: When they got there.
00:03:32
Speaker 4: I mean, I know it was quick, but when you're in that moment, nobody could have arrived fast enough. In my mind, they went in, they got my son out, and of course, as soon as I heard that they had him, I was calm because I thought everything's going to be all right, It's all going to be okay. It wasn't until I got to the hospital that I found out he had died in the fire. And then at that point you're just kind of in shock. You just shut down, and it took, you know, a while before I was able to come out up out of that. I don't think it happened until about two hours later when the police detectives came in and told me that it was an arson. It couldn't have been anything but and of course at that point, all that grief turns to anger because you're thinking, who could.
00:04:23
Speaker 3: Have done that? Why would they do that.
00:04:26
Speaker 4: I didn't have any enemies, you know, I was a nobody. Nobody would want to come in and intentionally do this, so I expected them to investigate and find out. Instead, they focused their investigations solely on me. And at that time, I'd never had any.
00:04:45
Speaker 3: Trouble with the law.
00:04:46
Speaker 4: I'd never dealt with law enforcement, so I had no clue that I needed to be protecting myself as an innocent person.
00:04:53
Speaker 3: I talked to them.
00:04:55
Speaker 4: Five days later, I was arrested and charged with murder and arson. I went through trial. That was, you know, a joke I think for most women, because we're represented by men usually. And he told me, you know, don't look too flashy because they already think you're a loose party girl because you're a single mom and you aren't married. He said, don't cry because if you don't cry enough, they're going to say you're faking. If you cry too much, they can say you're faking. He said, it's just better if you don't react at all. He said, I think we can talk to them about you being cold versus you being an actress.
00:05:43
Speaker 3: And so I took his advice.
00:05:45
Speaker 4: I sat there, I didn't say anything, and I listened to people talk about things that absolutely weren't true. That there had been a chair shipped in the doorway of his bedroom so that nobody could get in there to rescue him. And then this atf chemist testified that he had found accelerant in his bedroom. My jury took four hours.
00:06:08
Speaker 3: They convicted me.
00:06:10
Speaker 4: I was sentenced to sixty years for murder, fifty years for arson and sent to the Indiana Women's PRISM, which is a maximum security facility in Indiana. It took probably six years before I was able to get an attorney to take a look at my case. Once she did, she told me she believed I was innocent. We just had to fight it. So, being in prison, I didn't have a lot of resources. I wrote to innocence networks around the country. At that time, Indiana did not have an innocence project, so I was writing to projects out of state, hoping they would come in and help. It took a while, but the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.
00:06:58
Speaker 3: Came in that time.
00:07:00
Speaker 4: I had educated myself on fire science, and I knew without a doubt that I needed to see the ATF report because in that report he had said to my jury that it could have been one of three accelerants. I knew that if he had really tested it, he had narrowed it down to what accelerant it was. So I shared all of that with the Nisons Project attorneys. The first thing they did was get the ATF file, where they discovered the report that had been presented to my jury, and then they found an unaltered report that said no accelerant had been found in my son's bedroom.
00:07:39
Speaker 1: I was literally dumbfounded when I was reading that that there was first an original report written where he had done the research and said that there was no accelerant used, and he gave that to the two investigators I don't remember their names, and then they I don't know what happened, but I am assuming there was some times a conversation amongst them where they said go.
00:08:02
Speaker 2: Back and redo it.
00:08:05
Speaker 1: And then there was after the original report, then there was an official report release where he said there was an accelerant used. And the fact that there's these two contradicting reports that are out there, and the fact that they they met and conferred and came up with something that was completely made up is a mind boggling to me. The fact that they found that and that those two documents existed that were contradictory to each other is then that's mind boggling to me. What did you What were your thoughts when you found out that they had actually altered the report to make it look like there had been an accelerant used.
00:08:46
Speaker 3: I mean, at first your first thought is.
00:08:51
Speaker 4: Anger, anger that anybody in a position of power could do that to someone anyone. I think that's the hardest part about this is people in power can do things like this to normal, everyday people. Once that anger subsided, I expected to go right back to court and get released.
00:09:13
Speaker 3: It doesn't work like.
00:09:14
Speaker 2: That, right, So what was the next step?
00:09:17
Speaker 1: Once they're the innocent Center's representing you, you come up, you have the evidence. Then how long did it take to go through the court system until you were eventually exonerated?
00:09:28
Speaker 4: So the attorneys came on in early two thousand and seven. I went back to my original judge and prosecutor in two thousand and nine, and they presented all the new evidence. A lot of that was fire science evidence, because the things they had said to convict me were not true.
00:09:49
Speaker 3: You know, there is no.
00:09:51
Speaker 4: Indicator because there's a pattern on the floor that says it's arson or an accident.
00:09:57
Speaker 3: That was something that was believed way back when.
00:10:00
Speaker 4: Nowadays we have technology to prove that's not true. So all this new evidence was presented and the altered report my original judge and prosecutor took almost a year before they said none of that information would have made a difference to my jury. So then we had to appeal the process that was granted. Most people don't realize they pick one case out of one hundred to listen to. So I was blessed they took my case, they listened to it. Usually you get a quick response from the appellate court. It took them almost a year before they reversed my conviction and remanded me back for a new trial. And so I walked out of prison August twenty second of twenty twelve. I had been in there seventeen years, three weeks and a few days.
00:11:00
Speaker 1: You were in prison for those seventeen years. You know, first of all, I can't even imagine. I'm a mother, I can't fathom what you went through. Sorry, I'm getting emotional about your story, Like I just can't imagine more of a personal hell that someone could put me in. Then to lose a child, and then to be blamed for the death of that child, and then to be incarcerated, and then I believe you were pregnant at the time when you were incarcerated, is that correct? That's correct, and your child was taken away. So now you've lost two children, You've been blamed for the murder of your son, and you spent seventeen years in prison, and the fact that you were so strong to make yourself educated, to learn about fire science, to I mean, I don't know how anyone could have stayed in the state of mind that you were in, to be so powerful and to be so I don't even know what the word is but wrong, to get through each day and to make yourself I read all kinds of things you were involved in, ministry, you were involved in. What do you tell me what were some of the things that you did in those seventeen years?
00:12:08
Speaker 2: You did so many things.
00:12:10
Speaker 4: Yes, so I got an associates and bachelor's degree from Ball State University. I am a licensed cosmetologist, a certified paralegal, and a certified Vet Tech dog groomer and dog trainer because I trained dogs for nine years for physically and developmentally handicapped children.
00:12:31
Speaker 1: Do you think were those things that you were doing and all those things that you dedicated yourself to in the education?
00:12:37
Speaker 2: Is that what helped you get through each day?
00:12:39
Speaker 1: I assume that being able to try to be useful, to be educated, to learn all these things, to train dogs, to be involved in it. I would assume that those things allowed you to wake up every day and to continue on and to get through each day.
00:12:55
Speaker 4: Yes, those helped. But when I gave birth to my second son, Trent, and today is actually.
00:13:01
Speaker 2: His birthday, Oh that's great.
00:13:03
Speaker 4: My kid brother took him and so I saw him as often as he could get him there.
00:13:11
Speaker 3: And when he was younger that was every week.
00:13:14
Speaker 4: As he got older, you know, it went more sporadically because he had things to do. But just knowing that I had their support, that they were out there pulling for me, that was the drive always. With the education, it was a matter of I had felt so diminished when I went through court that I knew I was absolutely going to go in front of that judge again, and I wanted to show him what kind of a person I am.
00:13:44
Speaker 3: Who I am.
00:13:46
Speaker 4: I wasn't going to let him act like I was an an educated twit because I was naive and listened to my attorney and didn't say anything.
00:13:56
Speaker 1: Well, And I think it's also important that the listeners know that when you went through your first trial in June thirtieth of nineteen ninety five, I don't know if we said this before, but you were only twenty one years old at the time, which sounds like a baby. And I can't imagine grieving the loss of your son, being blamed for it, and then having to sit through court and having an attorney tell you what to do. I mean, no one in your position at twenty one years old would have been anymore savvy at that time. So, I mean it's so young, and so I don't know how you can even wrap your brain around what was going on at the time.
00:14:35
Speaker 2: You're still processing grief.
00:14:37
Speaker 3: I'm sure, yes, and as a mother, you'll relate to this. It's something that doesn't it doesn't leave.
00:14:48
Speaker 4: I mean, it's been thirty years since the fire happened and I lost Tony, and there are still times that I will wake up and.
00:15:01
Speaker 3: It hits me all over again. Then he's not there.
00:15:03
Speaker 4: Then I'm not going to get to see him, even after all this time. It's an ache that will never go away.
00:15:12
Speaker 1: Now, what's your relationship with Trent? Like, because I know you missed out on was he born while you were in prison?
00:15:19
Speaker 2: He was okay?
00:15:20
Speaker 1: And then how does that work? So you're pregnant when you're in prison, you give birth and do they just come and take the child away?
00:15:26
Speaker 4: Yes, they give it to your whoever's designated to take the baby. For some women, you know, it goes right into the system and it's placed with foster care. So I was lucky that I had family there to take him. And then of course I was also scared because I don't get to see them put him in their arms and know that he's okay and that he's with them. So as soon as I was transferred back to the facility, my brother came over into the visiting room to let me know that they had him and that he was okay.
00:16:03
Speaker 1: Now I know you've also been an advocate for women's healthcare in prison, because you went through a lot of things, and can you expand on some of the issues that you had and some of the healthcare issues.
00:16:15
Speaker 4: Absolutely, So when I came home, I wanted to be a mom again. That was, you know, high up on my list of dreams that I wanted to have one more time. So going in and trying to get pregnant and discovering that, you know, I should have been having path smears every year. That doesn't happen in prison. I received one five weeks after I gave birth, and that was it.
00:16:46
Speaker 3: So there were a lot of.
00:16:47
Speaker 4: Things that I hadn't been checked for I had never had a mammogram when I came home, and here I am, I'm trying to get pregnant, and I had to go through all these tests, and then I had to figure out what viruses had changed in the real world that I hadn't been exposed to in prison.
00:17:06
Speaker 3: And so you go through that whole process.
00:17:08
Speaker 4: I went through fertility treatments for four years. At no time did I realize that they could take my eggs and freeze.
00:17:17
Speaker 3: Them and I could wait a while.
00:17:19
Speaker 4: You know, I was forty when I came home, so there's a rush on things. They never told me that I didn't have to go through all that I could get an egg donor and I could carry a baby. So there was nobody there to really tell me what my options were. And all the tests they just scared me. Because I'd went so long without health care. I thought, oh, okay, it's because I'm healthy, and you know, they're not going to They're not going to do these things.
00:17:47
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I should have been having those regularly. I should have had a mammogram, I.
00:17:52
Speaker 4: Should have been checked up on so to go through that whole process, Plus I'm trying to rebuild my life, re enter society, connect with my child.
00:18:04
Speaker 3: It was just overwhelming.
00:18:05
Speaker 4: And now that I've went through all of that, you know that threw me right into menopause. I used every egg that I had, and so trying to figure out.
00:18:18
Speaker 3: What my body needs.
00:18:19
Speaker 4: Because while you're in there, you're not getting the best food, You're not getting vitamins, you're not getting minerals. So now I have a great doctor and she checks all the time, what are my vitamin levels, what are my mineral levels? Because as I get older, I don't have anything in reserve. I have to keep taking supplements and make sure I stay healthy.
00:18:39
Speaker 1: Did you ever end up having another child after leaving prison?
00:18:44
Speaker 3: I did not.
00:18:45
Speaker 2: You did not, So but you do have a good relationship with Trent.
00:18:47
Speaker 4: Now we have a good relationship. I mean, it's you can't ever go back and make up for that time, right, And I think between the two of us, we felt a lot of pressure to try to do that.
00:19:04
Speaker 3: We did counseling together.
00:19:05
Speaker 4: And just came to a point of we want to get to know each other where we are now. And I'm so passionate about wrongful convictions, especially when it involves women. I mean, there are less than four hundred women who have been exonerated out of almost four thousand on the registry, And of those seventy percent, there are cases like mine. It was an accident and they made it look like a crime, and these women lost loved ones. So I knew how vulnerable women were, and I couldn't stop talking about that. And for Trent, you know, when he sees me, I'm just his mom. When other people see me, I am an advocate, I am a justice worker. And so for him, he wants to separate himself. He wants to just have his relationship with his mom and not be involved in all the social justice advocacy.
00:20:18
Speaker 1: Did you ever receive any kind of acknowledgment or apology from the investigators ever or prosecutors? Because I was in my mind as I'm reading all about your case and I'm processing it, I'm thinking to myself that you spent what was it, sixteen years in prison, seventeen years in prison for something that you did not do, and these investigators manipulated information and evidence and then didn't have to pay for it, didn't have to apologize, didn't have to take accountability, didn't have to do anything. Yet you are the one that had to give up seventeen years of your life for doing nothing. And it's just I appreciate the fact that you have that you're such an advocate, that you have taken that because I would be so angry and so mad, and I'm sure you are, but that you've taken that anger and that and turned it into something powerful, and so I appreciate that about you.
00:21:24
Speaker 3: Well, thank you.
00:21:25
Speaker 4: And so no one apologized. Ever, you come out and you try to hold somebody accountable. The ATF chemist who had falsified the report and testified to that falsified report died a couple of months before I was released. So there's no way to hold him accountable because I have to prove that he changed that report with malicious intent. I don't know how you go about proving that somebody did something with malicious intent. In my mind, if somebody did something wrong, they're supposed to be held accountable, right, But we have protections in place, such as immunity, to stop people from being held accountable for what they do.
00:22:14
Speaker 1: Now, there was also someone that testified falsely. Was there someone involved in the fire department that they managed to manipulate into testifying that you had put the chair into the hallway in order to block the door so that people couldn't save your son, and that was not true at all exactly. Now, how did that come out? Did he end up admitting that he had lied about that?
00:22:38
Speaker 4: So now, when the attorneys got involved, they asked for all the evidence in my case, and I'm one.
00:22:46
Speaker 3: Of the fortunate ones.
00:22:48
Speaker 4: They had all of my evidence intact, one of which was a picture of the doorway of his bedroom. And so if something burns, it leaves a mark on the floor, you can see that it was protected by something. There was no protected area in the doorway.
00:23:06
Speaker 3: You could see clear through in there. There was nothing ever sitting there.
00:23:11
Speaker 4: So when he was questioned about it afterwards, he said, well it was it was smokey and I got confused.
00:23:19
Speaker 2: Right.
00:23:20
Speaker 1: Also, you had a big accomplishment when you were in prison. You were the first female inmate to ever take the ls lsat at the Indiana State Women's Prison.
00:23:31
Speaker 2: Now was that just part of your case?
00:23:33
Speaker 1: And getting involved and reading and being so educated on the fire science and all of that, did that push you into saying I want to get into Well, you took the LSAT was that with the plan of taking the bar exam.
00:23:46
Speaker 4: Eventually, absolutely I wanted to become a lawyer. I thought, that's you know, where I can put all this anger, all this drive, and I can protect other people. I had no clue that I was going to be so uncomfortable and have panic attacks going into a courtroom.
00:24:08
Speaker 3: Again.
00:24:09
Speaker 4: It's very easy to tell yourself that you know you're over trauma or that you've healed yourself, but when you go through something that's so horrific, that sticks with you.
00:24:27
Speaker 3: And the first time.
00:24:27
Speaker 4: I walked into a courtroom after that and I was assisting one of the attorneys that took my case, I had to leave. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't catch my breath, and I was like, you know, this is another dream that's going to be taken away from me. And it was my lawyers at Northwestern University that set me down and said, you can make just as much change in the justice system without becoming a lawyer.
00:24:55
Speaker 2: That's absolutely true.
00:24:56
Speaker 1: Now when I've been involved with the Innocence Project in San Diego for many years now, and I've met a lot of people that have been exonerated, and I would say a lot of the conversations that we have always revolve around what happens once you leave prison, because there's such a fight to get out of prison, and that's where the focus is, and that's where the stories are, and that's what people like to hear about. They like to hear how did it happen? How did you end up in prison? But then I feel like we don't ever talk about that transition of when you leave prison to be able to assimilate back into the world. And so I've tried to involve myself in a lot of ways to be able to learn more about it, to help you know, exoneries, you know, transition over into finding jobs and getting education and things like that, But what was it like for you specifically? So you're exonerated and then they say, Okay, now you get to go home, but you've been in prison for seventeen years, so you get to walk out.
00:25:55
Speaker 2: But then then what do you do?
00:25:58
Speaker 4: Oh Honestly, if it hadn't been for my brother and my son, I would have curled up in a room somewhere and never came out.
00:26:08
Speaker 3: I was scared.
00:26:12
Speaker 4: The Internet was just coming out when I went into prison, So I'd never been on the internet. My mobile phone was this big thing that you could get very far away from the base. I didn't know how to turn on the water in the bathrooms because nobody told me.
00:26:27
Speaker 3: They took the knobs.
00:26:28
Speaker 4: Away while I was in there. So everything was just very frightening, and I didn't know am I going to the right place and am I asking the right questions? And it's also embarrassment. I'm forty years old and I don't know how to do the things that people are doing now. Most people aren't talking to people anymore. They go through a self checkout, or they do things on an app. I had no clue what an app was. And I'd never had a card, a credit card, or a debit card. I barely had a checkbook. So the fact that people don't carry cash anymore. Everything's on a card or your PayPal, it took a lot to get used to.
00:27:15
Speaker 1: Were you able to find work? I know you managed to get all this education when you were in prison, So was that helpful for you when you were finally exonerated. Were you able to find a job and be able to support yourself?
00:27:27
Speaker 4: I was. Most people don't realize when you come home. If it's been over a certain amount of time, you don't get your driver's license right away, so I had to have a learner's permit. I wanted a job immediately, so I found a gas station that I could walk to and I started working there. It was just supposed to be part time work until I got my license. I think I worked two weeks and they offered me a position as an assistant manager. So I started training for management. And then when I got my license, I just still didn't feel comfortable in Indiana and I wanted to change, so I moved to Chicago.
00:28:12
Speaker 3: I got a job at River's.
00:28:14
Speaker 4: Casino as a security guard. They thought I had a knack for that after all that time in prison. And then I started working at Northwestern University.
00:28:25
Speaker 2: And what are you doing currently?
00:28:28
Speaker 3: Currently?
00:28:28
Speaker 4: I am the director of the Indiana Innocence Project.
00:28:32
Speaker 2: I love that. And what does that entail?
00:28:34
Speaker 1: So do cases come to you directly and you review them and decide whether to move forward or not? Or what is it that you do?
00:28:41
Speaker 4: So cases come to me directly, we enter them into a database. Because people are at different places in the process. So if somebody's at the appellate process, then we write them back and say, hey, you know, we don't look at this until after your appeal is done.
00:29:01
Speaker 3: So here's the paperwork.
00:29:03
Speaker 4: If you don't win on your appeal, go ahead and file your PCR so you can have it in and stop your habeas time clock. So the way Indiana is set up our intech process is about preserving people's rights because a lot of times people lose their habeas time clock because they just don't know. You need something filed in order to stop that process. Right, So we're hoping we can stop that process for people, follow them along and hopefully do something before their PCR is just kicked out.
00:29:37
Speaker 1: Now, is your case a case that people refer to as far as fire science and junk science? Because I know, i've I've I've researched other cases that have to do with junk science, Like you know, bitemarks are now considered junk science, and so how has the fire science progressed along that now it's considered junk Scien what they were talking about as far as your case?
00:30:03
Speaker 4: Oh yes, my case is one of those that they are referring to junk science. But it's also one of those cases where they talk about the new evidence that was brought in.
00:30:14
Speaker 3: So the big thing with my case.
00:30:17
Speaker 4: On the news side of science was that they had said that Tony had died a very horrible, painful death. But then we got a forensic toxicologist and she determined that he'd actually died of smoke inhalation, So he had gotten to a very high carbon monoxide level and by the time the fire broke out, he was already gone. He was gone when I was.
00:30:45
Speaker 3: Trying to save him, and I didn't know it.
00:30:50
Speaker 4: That doesn't signify an arson, and arson burns very hot and very fast and gives off low levels of carbon monoxide. But an accidental electrical fire, especially one that starts in the ceilings or the wall, they burn very slowly and smolder and they give off huge amounts of carbon monoxide.
00:31:15
Speaker 1: And that was determined in your case that it was an electrical fire, correct, and you had had electrical issues within that home before. Yes, what is it that you would hope people take away from your story in your case? I know that you are an advocate, I know that you talk about it, you put yourself out there. So what is your hope that someone listening to you or listening to this takes away.
00:31:41
Speaker 4: I think my biggest hope is always that someone will reach out and get a lawyer to protect themselves, no matter what the circumstances are, because a lot of times accidents happen, things happen in day to day life, and when the police come in and talk to you, you don't know what route they're going to take with a questioning what somebody else may have said, how somebody may be interpreting the evidence. So I hope that anybody that's in that situation would just go ahead and get a lawyer and make sure they're protected. It doesn't mean you're guilty, it doesn't mean you're not guilty. It means you want to protect yourself, right.
00:32:27
Speaker 1: And I assume at the time, when you were twenty one and they were questioning you, that you never, in your mind initially thought that they were questioning you because they considered you a suspect in any way. So I'm sure you were openly talking, you didn't think you needed an attorney, you didn't know that you should ask for an attorney, and then you end up arrested six days later. So I can only imagine that your takeaway would be to get an attorney immediately and to protect your rights. And I also we talk about this a lot on the podcast, that asking for an attorney doesn't signify guilt. It just means that you're protecting yourself and you're advocating for yourself.
00:33:07
Speaker 3: That's correct.
00:33:08
Speaker 4: And most people are afraid that it's going to be looked at like they're guilty if they ask for an attorney.
00:33:14
Speaker 3: That's not the case at all.
00:33:15
Speaker 4: They're just watching out for themselves exactly.
00:33:19
Speaker 1: All right, Well, thank you Christine for joining us today. I really appreciate you being so candid and open about your story and about what you went through, and I wish you the best of luck and happy birthday to your son Trent today.
00:33:33
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. It was an honor to be here with you.
00:33:36
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you guys so much for listening to Legally Brunette.
00:33:39
Speaker 2: We appreciate it. As always.
00:33:41
Speaker 1: You can find us anywhere you listen to podcasts, so make sure you follow our feed Legally Brunette, and I just wanted to say one more thing after speaking to Christine Bunch. One of the things that I've always taken away and a lot of exonerated persons that I've had conversations with have always said that they like to put their stories out there, no matter how difficult it is, because everyone listening is a potential juror. So I just want to leave that thought with you so that someday, if you're ever in the position where you're on a jury, that you become a little more savvy, You ask more questions, you look into the evidence, and you just have an open mind about things. So anyway, that's just something to throw out there that you guys can think about and kind of swirl around in your mind when it comes to wrongful conviction. So, as always, thanks so much for listening to Legally Brunette, and be sure to tell your friends and family thank you so much.
