James Kluppelberg is a free man this Sunday morning.  “I’m overexcited, overjoyed, apprehensive and a little nervous. I’m still trying to process my freedom,” he said upon being released from prison.  This is the first such Sunday morning since 1988, when he was arrested for a 1984 fire in Chicago. Originally determined accidental by the Police Department’s Bomb and Arson Unit, the fire department changed the determination to arson, without accompanying reports.

Mr. Kluppelberg’s conviction appears to be the result of a perfect (and perfectly predictable) storm, a combination of a coerced “confession”, snitch testimony from a man who later admitted he “lied because he was facing his own criminal charges,” and “science” that can most gently be describes as inaccurate. Francis Burns, a former Chicago Fire Department official, had visited the fire scene as a training exercise.  He took no notes, no photos, and filed no report, yet testified at trial in 1990 that the burn patterns indicated it was, indeed, arson.

Like many forensic sciences, arson investigation began on the ground with fire investigators.  As time has gone on, chemists, engineers, and others have performed experimnents which have largely debunked arson myths.  Gerald Hurst, a consultant in Austin, Texas, spoke out about reliance on myths such as burn patterns in 2004.  “God knows how many innocent people have been convicted.”  Reliance on burn patterns as an indication of arson was first debunked in 1980, in Brannigan, F. L., Bright, R. G., and Jason, N. H., Fire Investigation Handbook, National Bureau of Standards Handbook 134, National Bureau of Standards, Washington, D.C., August, 1980.  Additional studies of burn patterns in arson cases in 1997 and 2001 have established that “the patterns produced could not be used to discriminate an arson fire from an accidental fire.” (page 9).

Mr. Kluppelberg was fortunate to have the assistance of The Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, as well as lawyers from Winston & Strawn.  On May 31, 2012, Cook County prosecutors, after conducting a comprehensive reinvestigation of the evidence, announced they did not believe they could continue to meet the burden of proof necessary for a conviction and Mr. Kluppelberg’s convictions were vacated.

Mr. Kluppelberg lost a lot during his 24 years in prison.  He lost contact with his children, his wife divorced him, he wasn’t present for the births of his three grandchildren.  He left prison with $14.00 and some change in his pocket. Donations are being sought to assist Mr. Kluppelberg in reestablishing his life.