text: GREENSBURG, Ind. -- A mom who has been behind bars since 1996 accused of murdering her toddler son in an arson fire, walked free from jail Wednesday after new evidence was presented that led a court to grant her a new trial. 
   
   A sheriff led Kristine Bunch, wearing a new dress and black patent leather shoes and carrying her prison clothes in a Wal-Mart bag, out the door of the jail. He let go of her arm and then said quietly: "You're free." 
   
   Bunch, 38, turned down the sidewalk and went straight to her mother, Susan Hubbard. They had a long embrace. 
   
   Next in line for Bunch was her son, 16-year-old Trenton, who had never visited his mother outside of prison, who has never slept under the same roof with her except for his very first night. Bunch went back to the Indiana Women's Prison the day after giving birth at a local hospital. 
   
   Authorities say Bunch set fire to her mobile home in a blaze that killed her 3-year-old son, Tony. 
   
   Bunch, then 22, was sentenced to 60 years. But on Wednesday, at 38, she was released, pending a new trial that was granted in March by the Indiana Court of Appeals. 
   
   The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law took up Bunch's case in 2007 and was joined in the cause by Chicago attorney Ron Safer, whose Schiff Hardin firm worked on the case at no cost. In 2009, they presented new evidence to the appeals court based, in part, on technological advances in fire investigations. 
   
   The new evidence, Safer said, made it impossible for the fire to have happened the way the state alleged, that some test results the state provided were simply incorrect. In actuality, tests showed that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning, Safer said. Had the fire been set with an accelerant in the manner prosecutors alleged, he would have died from burns. 
   
   On Wednesday, Senior Circuit Judge W. Michael Wilke, based on the fact that Bunch's family put up bond money for her in 1996, said the words she and her family had waited 16 years to hear: "The defendant will be released from the Department of Corrections." 
   
   Decatur County prosecutors were unavailable for comment. Bunch has a court appearance next week. But, Safer said, "Today she is a free woman, and we are determined to make sure that she has spent her last day behind bars." 
   
   Bunch said she was initially in a state of shock upon being sentenced to 60 years for arson and the murder of her son. She likened it to a bad dream that wouldn't end. Upon her release, Bunch was joyful but expressed no bitterness over a conviction she has always maintained was a mistake. 
   
   "I haven't been by myself," she said. "I had a family that stood by me. I had people that believed in me and stepped up. And you can't receive blessings like that and be bitter." 
   
   While in prison, Bunch said she took part in Kairos prison ministry and became a Catholic. She earned undergraduate degrees in English and anthropology from Ball State University. And now she has dreams of going to law school, focusing on criminal law and joining a wrongful conviction team. 
   
   "I want to give back. I've been very blessed," she said. "One day I want to fight for others because others fought for me." 
   
   First, Bunch said she wants to get reacquainted with her family. 
   
   Trenton already has a long list of things he wants to do with his mom. 
   
   He wants to take a trip to the zoo, go to a concert, have her watch him run track in the spring if he makes the team. 
   
   "I want to do the stuff that I should have been able to do a long time ago," he said, "and never got to do." 
   
   Initially, though, Trenton may have to help his mother navigate her 16-year time warp. When she was last free, cellphones were the size of shoeboxes, and she was amazed at the tiny devices her friends and her legal team were toting, that half the courtroom had to cough up at the judge's order before her hearing began. 
   
   And then there's the Internet -- she's heard about it but never seen it. There's no access in the prison. 
   
   "My son said I'm going to teach you how to Facebook," she said, "and we're going to look at the Internet." 
   
   But Bunch also relishes the idea of much simpler pleasures. She wants to watch her son sleep. 
   
   "I've never gotten to see my son sleep except for little naps when he would come visit me," she said. "I want to be able to bounce in his room all night and look at him while he's asleep." ||||| Women's Project 
   
   Featured article by Emily Halter, CWC alum and Northwestern Pritzker School of Law 2018 graduate 
   
   "While some programs exist in the United States, for the most part, there are few avenues of support for incarcerated mothers. This Comment explores the possibilities currently available to incarcerated mothers, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to parent and that right should be extended to incarcerated mothers." 
   
   Center on Wrongful Convictions Spring Symposium 
   
   Celebrating the Fifth Anniversary of the Women's Project 
   
   March 16, 2018, 1:00-4:45 P.M. 
   
   Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, Thorne Auditorium 
   
   Reception immediately following in Thorne Lobby 
   
   Kerry Masterson Exonerated! 
   
   On November 2, 2017, Kerry Masterson was found not guilty after a second jury trial. Kerry was represented at her retrial by the Center on Wrongful Convictions and Neal Gerber Eisenberg. Read more about Kerry's case here. Read our press release here. Media coverage here and here. 
   
   Tyra Patterson may be home by Christmas. Due to the efforts of her many supporters, the Ohio Parole Board granted Ms. Patterson an early parole hearing in July 2017. News that she was granted parole came October 24, 2017. The Women's Project was honored to send a letter in support of Ms. Patterson to Govenor John Kasich in 2015. Congratulations, Tyra! 
   
   Podcasts featuring CWC exoneree Kristine Bunch 
   
   CWC exoneree Kristine Bunch is a tireless advocate for justice. In many different settings she has told the painful story of her wrongful conviction for the accidental death of her son - always with the objective of shedding light on the issues of false forensic science and serious flaws in the criminal justice system. Here are some recent podcasts featuring Kristine: 
   
   Everyday Law podcast 
   
   Actual Innocence podcast 
   
   Court Junkie podcast part I 
   
   Court Junkie podcast part II 
   
   Women's Project files amicus brief in Minnesota Supreme Court 
   
   The CWC Women's Project has filed an amicus brief in the Minnesota Supreme Court on behalf of Danna Back, a woman wrongfully convicted of second degree manslaughter. The actual perpetrator was an acquaintance of Ms. Back, and the high court overturned her conviction after holding she was not legally responsible for the perpetrator's actions. State prosecutors are nonetheless attempting to block her bid for compensation for the years she spent in prison. The Innocence Network has also filed an amicus brief in support of Ms. Back. 
   
   Amanda Knox tackles women and false confessions 
   
   We highly recommend this article by exoneree Amanda Knox, making the case for more research on how women experience interrogation tactics. The article quotes Women's Project Co-Director Judy Royal and cites an article by CWC attorneys Andrea Lewis and Sara Sommervold on the role of stereotypes in the wrongful conviction of women. 
   
   Women's Project screens San Antonio Four documentary 
   
   On September 29, 2016, the Women's Project hosted a screening of Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four. The San Antonio Four are Kristie Mayhugh, Elizabeth Ramirez, Cassandra Rivera and Anna Vasquez, four Latina lesbians wrongfully convicted in 1997 sexually abusing two children. Their attorney, Mike Ware, began the program by discussing the recently passed Texas junk science law that helped free them. Following the film screening, these inspiring women discussed their experience and their continuing efforts to clear their names and answered questions from the audience. Event page Facebook photo album 
   
   Women's Project Featured in Mother Jones Magazine 
   
   
   
   
   
   The attorneys of the Women’s Project, and Center on Wrongful Convictions client Kristine Bunch, are featured in an in-depth article by Molly Redden in the current issue of Mother Jones. The article discusses Kristine’s case, the reasons behind the formation of the Women’s Project, and some of the unique characteristics of Women’s Project cases. Andrea Lewis, Kristine Bunch, and Karen Daniel were interviewed on August 5, 2015, on HuffPost Live #FreeSpeechZone. 
   
   Why Women's Cases Are Different 
   
   Innocent women accused of heinous crimes face extraordinary challenges. In many cases, they are suspected of harming their children or other loved ones. As a result, when under investigation, they may be coping with deep personal loss, rendering them especially vulnerable to high-pressure interrogation tactics that can lead to false confessions or seemingly inculpatory statements. When women—traditionally viewed as nurturers and protectors—are accused of murdering or sexually abusing children, they are particularly reviled by society, including, of course, police, prosecutors, judges, jurors, and witnesses. 40% of female exonerees were convicted harming children or loved ones in their care. 
   
   In cases in which no crime has occurred—such as accidental or natural deaths that are mistaken for homicides—the evidence is often entirely circumstantial. DNA evidence, the gold standard for exonerating the innocent, has been central to less than 3% of women's exonerations (compared to 22% of men's exonerations). In circumstantial cases, other types of forensic evidence may play an unusually large role, yet the evidence may be erroneous. More than a third of exonerated women's cases involved flawed or misleading forensic evidence. Two-thirds of female exonerees were convicted in cases in which no crime occurred. 
   
   *Statistics on this webpage are derived from the National Registry of Exonerations and are reasonably current but may not be fully up to date. ||||| Center on Wrongful Convictions 
   
   CWC client Tommy Ward featured in The Innocent Man, premiering on Netflix December 14, 2018 
   
   The Innocent Man Netflix series includes the story of the Center on Wrongful Convictions’ client Tommy Ward. Tommy was convicted and sentenced to death in 1985 because of a false confession and official misconduct. The CWC, along with Oklahoma licensed attorney Mark Barret, continue to fight for Tommy in his post-conviction proceedings before a district court in Oklahoma. 
   
   Learn more about Tommy's case 
   
   CWC Client Marcel Brown Exonerated! 
   
   On July 18, 2018, prosecutors dismissed first degree murder charges against CWC client Marcel Brown, who had served 10 years in prison, since the age of 18. More details to follow, but here is a clip of Marcel walking free from the Cook County IL criminal courthouse with his CWC attorneys and family members: 
   
   Marcel Brown release clip 
   
   Wrongful Conviction podcast featuring CWC exoneree Jason Strong 
   
   Corey Batchelor and codefendant Kevin Bailey Exonerated! 
   
   On January 30, 2018, murder charges were dismissed against Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth client Corey Batchelor and his codefendant Kevin Bailey, who maintained they were physically coerced into falsely confessing to a 1989 murder. Media coverage here and here. 
   
   CWC Client Gabriel Solache Exonerated! 
   
   On December 21, 2017, murder and kidnapping charges were dismissed against CWC client Gabriel Solache, a former death row inmate, and his codefendant Arturo Reyes - both of whom had been behind bars for nearly 20 years. The dismissals followed lengthy post-conviction proceedings during which a Cook County Circuit Court judge found credible evidence that former Chicago detective Reynaldo Guevara had engaged in a pattern and practice of misconduct, and further that Guevara lied in court and could not be considered credible in any proceeding. Media coverage here and here. 
   
   CWC Client Raymond McCann II Exonerated! 
   
   On December 7, 2017, prosecutors dismissed perjury charges against Raymond McCann II, who had been wrongly suspected of murdering a young girl in Michigan in 2007, and then wrongly convicted of perjury in 2015 for statements he made during the murder investigation. McCann was represented in post-conviction proceedings by the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the Michigan Innocence Clinic. Read more about McCann's case here. Read our press release here. 
   
   CWC Client Kerry Masterson Exonerated! 
   
   On November 2, 2017, Kerry Masterson was found not guilty after a second jury trial. Kerry was represented at her retrial by the Center on Wrongful Convictions and Neal Gerber Eisenberg. Read more about Kerry's case here. Read our press release here. Media coverage here and here. 
   
   How Dana Holland Became the Country's First Double Exoneree 
   
   The CWC weighs in: Is Chicago really the 'False Confession Capital'? 
   
   CWC Director Karen Daniel's podcast interview on eyewitness identification evidence 
   
   "Exonerated" film 
   
   "Exonerated" vividly captures six of our clients' experiences before and after their exonerations. We gratefully thank photographer Andy Goodwin for creating this film, and we congratulate him for winning Best In Show at The Midwest Independent Film Festival. 
   
   Charles Johnson exonerated! 
   
   CWC client Charles Johnson was granted a new trial on July 11, 2016, based on fingerprint evidence discovered after trial pointing to an alternative suspect. On February 15, 2017, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office dropped all charges against Charles and his coodefendants Larod Styles, LaShawn Ezell, and Troshawn McCoy, all of whom were only teenagers when they falsely confessed to a 1995 double murder. More... 
   
   CWC Director Karen Daniel discusses wrongful convictions on the Undisclosed podcast 
   
   The friendship of two CWC clients is front-page news 
   
   Dana Holland and Christopher Coleman shared more than a cell in prison; they shared claims of innocence and dreams of freedom. Eventually, they also shared an attorney: Karen Daniel, now Director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. Chicago Tribune investigative reporter Steve Mills details their friendship and their eventual exonerations, a decade apart, in this incredible story: Innocent prisoners jailed in same cell forge friendship, and freedom. 
   
   Jane Beber Abramson Award 
   
   Thanks to the generosity of the family of the late Jane Beber Abramson, the Center on Wrongful Convictions is able to specially recognize one or more individuals every year "for extraordinary dedication to pursuing justice for the wrongly convicted." The award winners to date are: 
   
   2008: Judy Royal and Ron Safer 
   
   2009: Marian Tomlinson 
   
   2010: Gary Elden and Phyllis Mandler 
   
   2011: James Kaplan 
   
   2012: Amy Kaplan 
   
   2013: Amy Berg, Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, Peter Jackson, David McMahon, and Fran Walsh 
   
   2014: Mararet Soffin and Susan Swanson 
   
   2015: Michael Sklar 
   
   2016: Esther Hernandez 
   
   2017: Laura Caldwell and Joey Mogul 
   
   2018: Kristine Bunch and Juan Rivera 
   
   Thomas P. Sullivan Justice Award: 
   
   2018: Stephen B. Bright 
   
   Center on Wrongful Convictions Lifetime Achievement Award: 
   
   2018: Thomas F. Geraghty 
   
   In Memoriam: Our Beloved Jane Raley 
   
   It is with the greatest sadness that we announce the passing of Co-Director Jane Raley, a member of our legal staff since 2000 and truly the heart of the Center on Wrongful Convictions. She died peacefully at home on Christmas morning 2014, surrounded by her loving family. 
   
   The cause of criminal justice lost one of our greatest and most compassionate warriors. Jane was an incredible lawyer, a tenacious advocate for her clients, a revered mentor of law students and young lawyers, and an exceptionally loving and caring person. All who knew her will miss her beyond measure. Many innocent men and women are free from their convictions due to Jane’s work, and many young lawyers are out doing good in the world—and understand the good that attorneys can accomplish—due to Jane’s magnificent example during her 14 years as a law professor at Northwestern University School of Law. 
   
   A sampling of online tributes to Jane: 
   
   Rest in peace, our dear Jane. ||||| In the early morning hours of June 30, 1995, a fire sparked to life in Kristine Bunch's mobile home. It fanned out across the floor and climbed up the walls, then formed an impassable barrier across the middle of the trailer. Bunch, 21, snapped awake in the living room. Her three-year-old son, Tony, shrieked for her on the other side of the flames. 
   
   Bunch staggered outside and howled for a neighbor. She bashed Tony's window with a tricycle. As the flames lashed 30 feet into the dawn sky, a fire engine tore up to the house. A firefighter, crawling on his belly, found Tony's charred body in the bedroom. 
   
   Bunch told police she had no idea what caused the fire. Soon, though, arson investigators determined that a liquid accelerant such as kerosene or lighter fluid had been poured in Tony's bedroom and the living room. Police arrested Bunch on charges of arson and felony murder. Eight months later, Bunch went on trial. By then, she was 22 and unexpectedly pregnant with a second child. The evidence against her seemed overwhelming. Two arson investigators gave compelling testimony for the prosecution, and the jury took only a few hours to convict her on both counts. 
   
   At sentencing, Bunch recalled, the judge sneered down at her belly. 
   
   "I understand that you have arranged to have yourself impregnated," he said. "You thought it would work to your advantage somehow in this process. It will not. You will not raise that child." 
   
   The judge gave her the maximum sentence: 60 years. 
   
   
   
   Karen Daniel and Judy Royal are obsessed with people like Bunch. 
   
   During their nearly 30 combined years at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Law School, the two lawyers have helped exonerate more than two dozen people once found guilty of horrendous crimes. Most of the people they have freed are men; just four are women. And for a long time, Daniel and Royal thought that disparity made perfect sense. Men are convicted of crimes, especially violent crimes, at much higher rates than are women. So it follows that most people exonerated of crimes are also men: The National Registry of Exonerations, a University of Michigan Law School database that has cataloged information on more than 1,600 exonerations nationwide since 1989, includes just 148 women. 
   
   About three years ago, however, Daniel and Royal began to question whether that number was too low. Women make up about 11 percent of the people convicted of violent crimes, but just 6 percent of those exonerated of violent crimes. At the urging of a former client, Julie Rea Harper—who spent four years in prison for the murder of her son before a serial killer confessed to the crime—Daniel and Royal decided to try to figure out if there was anything that set exonerated women apart. 
   
   They started by looking at the few women whose cases they had worked on themselves. "I haven't had any men's cases that looked like these four cases," Daniel recalls thinking. "Could that really be a coincidence?" 
   
   After three years of pursuing that question, Daniel and Royal have concluded that most innocence projects—including their own legal clinic—are failing to bring justice to wrongly convicted women. They have identified factors that make female clients more difficult to exonerate, and uncovered startling facts that distinguish the cases of wrongly convicted women from those of men. And they have launched a project that could change how the American innocence movement helps these women get justice. 
   
   
   
   Daniel and Royal started by digging deep into the exonerations database. Their first insight had to do with DNA evidence—the very breakthrough that launched the innocence movement a quarter century ago. "Women tend not to be convicted of the types of crimes that can be overturned based on the results of DNA testing," Daniel explained. Men perpetrate the overwhelming majority of rapes and murders of strangers. These crimes are much more likely to leave behind DNA evidence that can rule out an innocent suspect, or point to the real rapist or killer. 
   
   But when women kill, they usually kill someone close to them. And in most of those cases, DNA isn't relevant. When a woman is suspected of killing her husband or her child, investigators are likely to find her DNA all over the crime scene whether she's guilty or innocent—so DNA testing can do little to exonerate her. Sure enough, 27 percent of the men in the exonerations registry were freed using DNA evidence. The same was true of only 7.6 percent of the women. 
   
   Yet many exoneration projects, including the original Innocence Project founded in 1992, only work with convicts who can be absolved through DNA. Because courts consider DNA tests definitive and trustworthy, genetic evidence is often the most effective way to overturn a wrongful conviction. Innocence projects have tended to avoid cases in which the offender knew the victim, because it can be hard to disentangle what happened in a domestic crime. In some cases, Daniel said, "you almost have to look into that person's brain to know what happened." About half the women in the registry went to prison for harming someone in their care. 
   
   But reliance on DNA and aversion to domestic cases weren't the only hurdles for wrongly convicted women. In a whopping 63 percent of the women's cases, Daniel and Royal realized, it turned out that there was never a crime to begin with—the death was actually a suicide or an accident. That was true in only 21 percent of the men's cases. 
   
   This was a critical discovery. The tools innocence projects rely on are designed to solve crimes. When DNA evidence isn't available, innocence investigators may seek to establish alibis, interview witnesses overlooked by police, undermine mistaken witness identifications, or track down alternative suspects with a history of similar crimes. Attorneys have a much easier time getting a wrongful conviction reopened when they can point to the real culprit. 
   
   Yet if a woman is wrongly convicted for an accident that kills her child, there is no crime to solve, no "real killer," and probably no alibi. 
   
   Overturning convictions for crimes that were really accidents is difficult and time-consuming. Attorneys may have to prove that the prosecution misused or misunderstood forensic science or withheld crucial evidence. Proving that something was an accident may require attorneys to understand highly technical and controversial evidence on fire science, shaken-baby syndrome, toxicology, or rare medical conditions, and hire expensive expert witnesses to bolster their arguments. These hurdles disproportionately affect women: Daniel and Royal have found that 37 percent of the women (but around 20 percent of the men) in the exonerations registry were cleared because their original convictions used false or misleading forensic evidence. 
   
   There was one more thing that set exonerated women apart: Daniel and Royal have come to believe that, in many cases in which women were freed because no crime had been committed, sexist stereotypes had been used to conjure up a motive. 
   
   "Almost every case has something like this," Daniel told me, recounting one trial in which a prosecutor suggested a mother had killed her son so she could pursue a career in modeling. "That was based on one tiny conversation expressing slight interest in maybe having a nice photo taken," Daniel said. The woman spent years in prison before the real perpetrator came forward. 
   
   When Harper, the woman blamed after a serial killer murdered her son, was on trial, the prosecution portrayed her variously as thirsty for revenge on her ex-husband or, pointing out her pursuit of a postgraduate degree, career-obsessed with no time for a child. Her ex-husband testified that Harper considered an abortion when she first became pregnant (which Harper denied). "And that was used to show she was capable of murder," Royal said, noting that the trial—and jury selection—took place in a rural, heavily conservative county in Illinois. 
   
   In the case of Kristine Bunch, the prosecutor said he didn't think the blaze burned Bunch badly enough. Wouldn't a mother walk through fire to save her child? He offered evidence that Bunch was a bad mother, telling the jury in his closing argument that she had asked a friend to take custody of Tony, even though the friend had denied this rumor in her testimony. Not to mention the judge's comments about Bunch's pregnancy. 
   
   These sorts of narratives have "nothing to do with whether the evidence shows that a person did what they're being accused of," said Andrea Louise Lewis, an attorney who works for Royal and Daniel. "And these women get wrongfully convicted in these cases where nothing happened. Nothing criminal happened at all." 
   
   
   
   After Kristine Bunch gave birth to her second son, correctional officers put her in an ankle chain just long enough for her to reach the toilet in her hospital room. It had been three months since she went to prison. Bunch held her baby for a fleeting moment before her parents took him home with them. Then she made it her single-minded mission to find someone to help reopen her case. 
   
   "I realized, I'm going to have to fight," Bunch recalled. She sent out hundreds of letters and received hundreds of rejections. 
   
   Daniel and Royal have come to believe that in many cases sexist stereotypes had been used to conjure up a motive. 
   
   While Bunch despaired in prison, new research emerged showing that the signatures of an accidental fire are easy to confuse with signs of arson; as a result, many old arson cases have been called into question. In a similar vein, child abuse investigators once took it as gospel that a baby with brain swelling and certain forms of internal bleeding had been violently shaken within the past several hours. But a new body of evidence suggests that infections, infant strokes, and accidental falls can also cause the telltale symptoms of shaken-baby syndrome (SBS). Meanwhile, child abuse researchers now believe that a symptom like brain bleeding can take days—not hours—to cause serious problems. If a child has several caregivers—a babysitter, relatives, and immediate family members—it can be impossible to say with certainty who abused her. 
   
   But it's prosecutors who decide whether to file charges or fight appeals, and not all of them buy the new science. When I sent questions about wrongly convicted women to the National District Attorneys Association, I was referred to Josh Marquis, an NDAA board member and Oregon district attorney who is a strident skeptic of the innocence community. Daniel and Royal noted that a disproportionate number of women are exonerated because new science cast doubt on their original conviction—or even moved medical experts who once testified against them to change their minds. But Marquis said that he and many of his fellow prosecutors don't trust the developing science. New doubts about SBS, he said, are shared by only "a very small group of doctors" whose voices have been amplified by the defense bar. As for developments in arson science, he said, "arson investigation is more of an art than a science." 
   
   It was only when Bunch connected with an Indianapolis attorney named Hilary Bowe Ricks, and scraped together a modest fee using her $1.30-a-day prison earnings, that she learned that new arson science could cast her conviction into doubt. In 2006, Ricks convinced the Northwestern center to join the case, and the team, which by then included Daniel, soon found a bevy of problems with the conviction. Bunch's original defense attorney had argued that one of the trailer home's many electrical problems probably caused the fire. Any accelerant, he insisted, was likely from a kerosene heater the family sometimes ran in the living room. However, state investigators working on-site (using now-questionable science) observed burn patterns in Tony's bedroom that fire experts at the time saw as undisputed evidence of arson. And a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives chemist who examined 10 samples sent to his Washington, DC, lab testified at Bunch's original trial that the floor of both the living room and the bedroom tested positive for liquid accelerant. 
   
   Bunch's new legal team obtained the raw data that the ATF chemist had analyzed. According to lawsuits her attorneys have since filed against the investigators for withholding evidence, someone had altered the result for the sample in Tony's bedroom, which was negative for accelerant, making Bunch seem guilty. It appeared to Ricks as though investigators hadn't found accelerant anywhere in the trailer home, except in the living room, where the heater stood. 
   
   The fire that had taken Tony's life now looked like an accident. (The state investigators have denied any wrongdoing, and an ATF spokeswoman declined to comment.) 
   
   Bunch's legal team brought this undisclosed evidence to the Indiana Court of Appeals. On March 21, 2012, a three-judge panel reversed Bunch's conviction. The state Supreme Court affirmed the ruling in August, and she walked out of prison, a free woman for the first time in more than 16 years. By Christmas, prosecutors quietly declined to retry her. 
   
   "When you walk out, you're exonerated, and you're free and clear. But that hurt, that humiliation, that shame—it doesn't go away." 
   
   
   
   A few months after Bunch was released, Daniel and Royal launched Northwestern's Women's Project, an exoneration effort focused exclusively on freeing wrongly convicted women. They have already agreed to represent six women—cases that will involve child head trauma and arson science—and in December, they asked the Illinois Supreme Court to grant their first appeal. Meanwhile, their team is poring over files from dozens of suspicious convictions around the country and amassing court transcripts for an in-depth study of wrongful convictions of women accused of killing their children. 
   
   Daniel and Royal's tiny project may wind up in the vanguard of work to exonerate both men and women. More wrongful convictions are overturned each year, but fewer and fewer of them involve DNA: Paul Cates, a spokesman for the Innocence Project, told me that investigators have now cleared many "easy" DNA cases—such as convictions that can be overturned by testing a single previously untested rape kit. Instead, more cases now involve complex DNA evidence, or none at all, and many more of those cases are ultimately found to involve an accident. Last year, a record 125 people were exonerated across the country; in 58 of those cases, courts found no crime was committed at all. 
   
   Today, Kristine Bunch volunteers for the Women's Project, sorting through inmates' letters. She reads each one carefully, remembering the decade she spent writing pleas just like theirs. "You live with this freaky numbness," she said. "It's almost like you're underwater and everything is in slow motion. And you can't seem to pull yourself up out of it." 
   
   She is thrilled that there is now an outfit giving convictions like hers its full attention, run by attorneys who understand that everything about a woman—her career, her ambitions, how much she cries—is ripe for judgment. In her off-hours, she is trying to get to know her 19-year-old son. Even though she saw him nearly every weekend in prison, she missed out on raising him, and building a strong relationship has proved difficult. 
   
   So has the healing process. Many men who were wrongfully convicted didn't know their supposed victims. But with Bunch, the accident she was blamed for not only took 17 years of her life—it took her child. 
   
   "You're accused of this horrible, horrible crime, you're put away, you have newspapers saying horrible, horrible things about you," she said. "When you walk out, you're exonerated, and you're free and clear. But that hurt, that humiliation, that shame—it doesn't go away because you've been exonerated. It's hard to step back out and act like you're normal and part of the world."
target: – Exonerating women who are wrongfully convicted of violent crimes is no easy task—just ask Kristine Bunch. She got 60 years for supposedly setting the fire that killed her 3-year-old son in 1995, and struggled to find anyone who could help, Mother Jones reports. Finally, lawyers at the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school exposed a glaring hole (and possibly corruption) in the arson investigators' case. That evidence got Bunch released in 2012 after 16 years in prison, USA Today reported at the time. Then two lawyers from the Center, Karen Daniel and Judy Royal, began helping wrongfully convicted women based on a shocking statistic: Women constitute roughly 11% of violent-crime convictions but only 6% of overturned cases. But why are women's cases harder to overturn? Daniel and Royal give their reasons: Women are usually convicted of violent crimes against people close to them (like a husband or son) so DNA evidence won't help; the suspect's DNA is already spread around the crime scene. By contrast, men usually assault or kill strangers. An incredible 63% of women's exoneration cases turn out to be accidents or suicides rather than crimes. So instead of finding a "real culprit," Daniel and Royal may have to laboriously dismantle the prosecutors' case, perhaps with new science on arson or shaken-baby syndrome that not everyone accepts. Sexist stereotypes are used against women in court. In the case of a woman wrongfully convicted of murdering her son, the prosecutor implied she did it to pursue a modeling career. "That was based on one tiny conversation expressing slight interest in maybe having a nice photo taken," says Daniel. "Almost every case has something like this." Click for Mother Jones' full article.