Attorneys for Koua Fong Lee said that their hands were tied, figuratively, by the Ramsey County attorney's office during the inspection April 20-21 of Lee's car. Lee was driving the 1996 Toyota Camry when he was involved in a deadly accident in St. Paul in the summer of 2006.

The accusations were in an amended petition, filed in Ramsey County District Court on Wednesday and made public Thursday, seeking a new trial for Lee based on "newly discovered evidence and ineffectiveness of [trial] counsel."

Lee, now 32, is serving an eight-year sentence for criminal vehicular homicide in the June 10, 2006, crash at the top of the Snelling Avenue exit ramp off Interstate 94E. Three people ultimately died; two were injured.

Lee's current attorneys, Brent Schafer and Robert Hilliard, have sought to link the crash to Toyota's sudden acceleration problems. They said that the goal of automotive engineer Rich Dusek, the expert they hired to look at the heavily damaged Toyota, was to "determine whether the Lee vehicle was defective." The state's goal, the petition said, was "to complete the inspection within two days rather than collecting evidence."

Dusek was not allowed to inspect or do further testing on Lee's car's electrical systems, the document said.

"The vehicle inspection initially requested by Mr. Lee ultimately became a token inspection run by the state," it said.

"Hogwash," County Attorney Susan Gaertner said.

"That's hogwash, a term that I'm guessing the Texas lawyer will recognize," she said of Hilliard. "But more specifically about the protocol, it's very important and a well-recognized principle of law and fact-gathering that you can't destroy that which you seek to examine. That's exactly what the defense expert's request would have done, destroy the evidence so that no further examination could have been done."

The petition said that despite the limitations, Dusek was able to discover what the attorneys called "new evidence": That the brake light filaments indicated that the brakes were on when the crash occurred and that the throttle valve on Lee's car was able to close completely.

Lee's trial attorney, Tracy Eichhorn-Hicks, knew from an October 2006 inspection that the brake lights were on at the time of the crash. But it meets the criterion for new evidence because the issue of sudden unintended acceleration is now known, the petition said.

Dusek also found that the throttle valve was able to close completely, contrary to trial testimony from a mechanic from the city of St. Paul who said the crash damage to the front end caused the throttle to be stuck open. If that was true, the petition said, the valve would not be able to close.

The petition contends that "The jury might have reached a different conclusion had [the mechanic] not testified that the crash caused the throttle to stick open. ... The state had no other evidence supporting its theory ... that Mr. Lee mistakenly hit the accelerator. ... The stuck throttle provided an explanation for the crash."

The petition also said that Lee had "ineffective assistance of counsel." It said that Eichhorn-Hicks implied Lee's guilt to the jury without Lee's consent and that he repeatedly implied that Lee had mistakenly hit the accelerator instead of the brakes.

Although Eichhorn-Hicks knew about the brake lights, the jury never heard that piece of evidence. Eichhorn-Hicks said earlier this year that it didn't matter because he still had no explanation for why the car accelerated.

Pat Pheifer • 612-741-4992