Judge rejects request by Fong Lee's family for new trial

He also reprimands the family's attorneys for several mistakes including showing victim's bullet-ridden body.

By ABBY SIMONS, Star Tribune

Last update: June 26, 2009 - 11:38 PM

A federal judge issued a scathing denial of the new trial requested by the family of Fong Lee, saying each "blunder, misstep and mistake" by the family's attorneys warranted the multiple courtroom reprimands.

In his 16-page order, Judge Paul Magnuson cited in particular attorney Michael Padden's projecting a picture of Fong Lee's bloody, bullet-riddled body on screens throughout the St. Paul courtroom, resulting in loud sobs from Lee's family.

Magnuson wrote that he would have been fully justified in declaring a mistrial as soon as the photo was shown.

Padden maintained displaying the photo was a technical error.

Magnuson called the act part of "a display the likes of which this Court has never seen before."

Lee was killed by police officer Jason Andersen in 2006, and since then Lee's family has maintained that he was gunned down without justification.

Police said Andersen was justified and acted heroically.

A federal jury decided May 28 that Andersen acted within the law.

The family's attorneys outlined several reasons for a new trial in a motion filed earlier this month, including that the court should not have allowed testimony that Lee was a gang member, Magnuson's "suggestive" instructions to the jury and his "temper" in court.

The showing of the photo resulted in a strong reprimand from Magnuson, which triggered the plaintiff's argument about the judge's temper.

The judge lambasted Padden's suggestion that he should have given specific instructions on how to display graphic pictures.

"In nearly 30 years on the federal bench this Court has never found it necessary to instruct counsel that prior to displaying to the jury a graphic picture of a dead body, it would be a good idea to offer it into evidence first." Magnuson wrote. "...That plaintiff's counsel needed to be instructed on how to treat as delicate a subject as pictures of Plaintiff's deceased son simply defies belief."

Abby Simons • 612-673-4921