by STEVE HAN
A Korean immigrant man whose conviction in the 1989 arson-murder of his daughter was overturned has stepped out of a Pennsylvania prison and into freedom, after 24 years behind bars.
“Today, I finally became an innocent man,” Han Tak Lee, 79, told reporters last Friday, in comments translated from Korean, according to Yonhap News. “For what’s left of my life, I want it to be worthwhile and happy.”
In June, a federal judge magistrate had recommended Lee be released from prison or given a new trial, concluding that his 1990 conviction for setting a fire at a cabin in the Pennsylvania mountains that killed his daughter was based on now-discredited fire science. Then, earlier this month, U.S. District Judge William Nealon concurred with the magistrate’s recommendation, throwing out the 1990 state conviction and Lee’s sentence of life without parole. He gave prosecutors 120 days to decide whether to retry Lee.
On Friday, Lee became a free man, after a judge released him on bail.
After his release, Lee thanked his legal team and supporters, many of whom had gathered outside the Harrisburg, Pa., courthouse. He said he owed them “debts that cannot be repaid except by making the most of my renewed life,” according to the Associated Press.
In the summer of 1989, Lee, a New York clothing store owner, had taken his mentally ill daughter, Ji Yun, to a Christian church retreat in the Pennsylvania mountains at the suggestion of a pastor. Ji-Yun’s behavior at home had grown volatile, and she was reportedly throwing objects out of the window of their third-story Queens apartment. At the cabin where they were staying, a fire broke out in the early morning hours of July 29, and while Lee escaped, his daughter perished in the blaze.
Investigators at the time grew suspicious of the father, after arriving at the scene and finding him sitting on a bench outside the cabin, his expression seemingly emotionless. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time, “Jung Sun [Lee, Ji Yun’s mother,] collapsed to her knees, covering her face and crying before firefighters and investigators. Her husband … seemed so stoic, so restrained, so cold. And that demeanor was a major reason he was found guilty in 1990 of murdering his daughter.”
In addition, prosecution experts at the time said that the physical evidence–including burn patterns and accelerants on Lee’s clothing–clearly indicated arson, based on accepted arson science at the time.
In his ruling this past June, however, Federal Judge Magistrate Martin Carlson noted the revolution in fire science in the past 20 years has called those assumptions into serious question. Many other cases across the country that were based on now-debunked fire science are also being challenged.
Carlson also said that Lee’s stoic behavior at the fire scene may have been the result of a cultural issue, as the Korean immigrant man may have felt like he had to suppress showing his true emotions publicly—a contention long made by many of Lee’s supporters in the Korean American community.
Lee, who has maintained his innocence from the beginning, has been appealing his case in federal court since 2008.
He plans to live in the Flushing area of Queens, Yonhap reported.
Photo via Yonhap
