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."
