ARCHIVES: TWO COURT CASES
By Lyndon Y. Ong’79
I recently attended a program at NYU Law School tat discussed two pending court cases involving Asian Americans. I would like to bring these to your attention, since they seem to hold disturbing implications.
The first case is that of Chol Soo Lee, a Korean who has been on death row in California. As the speaker described it, Lee was caught up in a police "crackdown" on gang activity in San Francisco Chinatown in 1978, and convicted of the murder of a gang adviser. In their haste to have a conviction, the court ignored witnesses that testified in Lee's favor, while the entire case rested on the testimony of three white tourists who identified Lee as the killer. The press continually described Lee as chinese, and it took a Korean reporter to recognize by accident that the name was in fact Korean. Subsequently, thanks to the support received from the Korean community, the conviction was overturned in 1979. In the meantime, however, Lee was involved in a prison fight that resulted in the death of another prisoner. During the trial, the prosecution painted Lee as an "Asian hit-man" for hire, and the judge refused to inform the jury that the first conviction had been overturned. An appeal is now underway.
The case of David Truong similarly involves the use of an individual as an example, based on his race or activities. Truong is a Vietnamese man who had been involved in normalizing relations with Vietnam after the end of the war. In the process, he obtained copies of some diplomatic cables, and sent them to friends in Europe. The government declared this a breach of national security — though none of the information was military, and there were no restrictive markings on the cables — and wiretapped Truong's phone, opened his mail, and broke into and bugged his apartment in Washington. He was convicted of espionage in 1978 and is appealing his sentence. If it is upheld, the government will have given itself greater latitude for illegal activities under the name of national security.
Of course only one side was presented at the NYU Program and you may choose to withhold judgment on the cases. the importance of the cases, if the Program was accurate, is that without our involvement, there are still no guarantees of justice without influence due to our race or beliefs. That there was involvement was clear at the NYU reception. In fact, this may be old news to many of you. If not, and you would like more information, you can write to:
- Vietnam Trial Support Committee
- 1322 18th Street NW
- Washington, DC 20036
- NY Independent Committee to Free Chol Soo Lee
- 39 Bowery Box 375
- New York, NY 10002
- Asian America Legal Defense and Education Fund
- 350 Broadway Suite 308
- New York, NY 10013
