Changing science casts doubt
on arson conviction
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/12/08/arson.trial.ap/index.html
EAST STROUDSBURG, Pennsylvania (AP) --
The clues were everywhere. A young woman lay dead in a
burned cabin at a church camp, while her father survived.
Most of the lessons taught to budding fire investigators
stood out at the scene. The local experts -- the county
fire marshal, a state-hired fire analyst, a chemist --
spoke without hesitation that it all proved arson -- and
murder.
No one questioned their conclusion. It was a textbook case,
and the father, Han Tak Lee, was dealt a guilty verdict and
a life sentence.
Except the textbooks were wrong. Within a few years of
Lee's conviction, scientific studies smashed decades of
earlier, widely accepted beliefs about how fires work and
the telltale trail they leave behind.
Today, fire investigators are taught that the clues relied
upon in the 1989 investigation of the cabin fire don't
prove anything more than an accident.
And some of the leading U.S. experts on arson say that Lee
was the victim of a horrible tragedy, not a criminal. There
could be hundreds more like him, people wrongfully
convicted of arson, these experts say.
Pennsylvania courts have repeatedly rejected the argument
that the prosecution's case was built on bad science.
"I never killed my daughter. I never set the fire. I'm not
the right person to be here," Lee, now 71, says through a
translator at Rockview medium-security prison in central
Pennsylvania. "This is not arson. This is an accident."
A definitive count isn't possible, but leading fire
investigators across the country estimate that there could
be hundreds of mistaken arson prosecutions, all built on
the same ideas that were uprooted more than a decade ago.
The
next DNA?
The new
arson science could become the most powerful tool to reveal
wrongful convictions since DNA testing began overturning
rape and murder cases in 1989. Critics also say it's still
happening, because some investigators continue to prosecute
cases based on discredited methods.
"How do you know someone's guilty if you don't know a crime
has been committed?" says Richard Custer, a principal
architect of a pivotal document on arson that helped bring
the changes to light.
Another widely known investigator, John J. Lentini, has
been a consultant on Lee's case, analyzing evidence and
testimony.
His conclusion: "While the Commonwealth's witnesses may
have believed that they were testifying truthfully, the
fact is that the jury was misled by objectively false
testimony."
The Lees were in Pennsylvania that morning 17 years ago
because Han Tak Lee and his wife had hoped to heal their
oldest daughter's mental problems.
Han Tak had come to New York City from South Korea and
started a clothing business, working six days a week until
he could bring his family over to join him.
Manic depression had surfaced a year or so after his oldest
daughter, Ji Yun, had immigrated with her mother.
Medication had helped. But things were unraveling again.
The family's Pentecostal pastor suggested the church
retreat. Father, daughter and preacher prayed until the wee
hours of the morning.
The
conventional wisdom
Then,
the fire -- one that, to investigators, pointed clearly to
Lee. Part of the reason is what they were taught about
arson in those days:
>>Fires
always burn up, not down.
>>Fires
that burn very fast are fueled by accelerants; "normal"
fires burn slowly.
>>Arsons
fueled by accelerants burn hotter than "normal" fires.
>>The
clues to arson are clear. Burn holes on the floor indicate
multiple points of origin. Finely cracked glass (called
"crazed glass") proves a hotter-than-normal fire. So does
the collapse of the springs in bedding or furniture, and
the appearance of large blisters on charred wood, known as
"alligatoring."
>>Firefighters
and investigators arrived at these conclusions through
decades of observation. But those beliefs had never been
given close scientific scrutiny, until the 1970s and 1980s.
>>Once researchers began to apply the scientific
method to beliefs about fire, they fell apart.
>>>The studies began to chip away at the old
beliefs, but it took years. Through the 1980s, texts at the
National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, Maryland, still taught
the traditional techniques.
>>It wasn't until 1992 that a guide by the National
Fire Protection Association -- "NFPA921: Guide for Fire and
Explosion Investigations" -- clearly laid out, in a
document relied upon by authorities nationwide, that the
earlier beliefs were wrong
>>"It's not that they're bad investigators or there's
been any conspiracy to promulgate erroneous conclusions --
it's just the way it was," says Custer, the former
associate director of the national Fire Research Laboratory
and one of the principal editors of the 1992 guide.
>>"How many years did we think the Earth was flat?"
Suspicion
from the beginning
In the
hours before daybreak on July 29, 1989, police and
firefighters quickly became suspicious.
Han Tak Lee seemed calm. He didn't cry. He sat on a bench
across from the burning cabin with two bags of luggage at
his feet.
Prosecutor E. David Christine Jr. argued Lee's demeanor was
that of a killer, not a grieving father.
But Koreans say that men traditionally don't express much
emotion, and never in public. And Lee is nothing if not
traditional, his wife and surviving daughter say.
Lee says now that, watching the cabin burn, he was
overwhelmed and stunned into silence.
"I found that I just lost my spirit and my mind there. It
felt like all the blood drained out of my body," he says.
"In Korea, men are not allowed to cry. If your daughter is
suddenly found dead, there's nothing you can do. You just
lost your soul. You can't even think."
With a crime already suspected, the pieces soon fit into
place.
They found pour patterns on the floor that indicated
multiple points of origin, "alligatored" charring, crazed
glass, damaged furniture springs. Investigators had their
evidence.
Murder
or suicide?
Lee's
lawyer never disputed the conclusion of arson. He argued
instead that Ji Yun had started the fire herself to commit
suicide.
The family has never accepted that. She viewed suicide as a
sin, they say.
Jurors didn't accept the defense attorney's argument,
either. They believed the experts.
On September 17, 1990, they convicted Lee of murder.
Several appeals before Pennsylvania courts have won him no
relief.
Christine, still Monroe County's district attorney, did not
return repeated phone calls. An assistant argued before the
court that the new science was, in effect, simply "two
expert witnesses that have opposing views." A Pennsylvania
state court agreed and rejected Lee's claim.
Lee's attorneys appealed that decision on November 27 to
the state Supreme Court.
Other experts have looked at Lee's case and agreed with
Lentini's conclusions. "That's a perfect example of a
system run amok," says David M. Smith, a former city bomb
and arson investigator in Tucson, Arizona, who retired to
start his own investigation firm.
For the Lees, there's no getting past the tragedy that took
Ji Yun. But they still want one more chance from the
justice system.
In prison, Han Tak Lee exudes a kind of desperate hope as
he meets with a reporter and translator. "I never regret,"
he says. "I have very strong faith. I will get out as a
free man."
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