FINALLY Koua Fong Lee gets to move forward with his life and go back to living with his wife and 4 children. For those of you who don’t know the story:
Lee, who immigrated to the U.S. from a Thai refugee camp in 2004, was driving a Toyota Camry when it plowed at high speed into the back of an Oldsmobile as Lee exited a St. Paul freeway ramp in 2006. He insisted during his trial that he did everything he could to stop the car but couldn’t.
Lee’s attorneys had argued that evidence backed up Lee’s account he was trying to brake. Prosecutors had opposed a new trial, saying there was no compelling new evidence.
Now we have the benefit of hindsight and some questions should be asked:
1. Did Toyota know at the time that they had an acceleration problem?
2. Why would the prosecutors not want a retrial when overwhleming evidence showed that there was strong possibility he was telling the truth?
3. This illustrates the racial disparity in our justice system. WHy should he have had such an incompetent lawyer? Where is the outcry to get rid of incompetent public defenders?
Finally I think it is time for Toyota to start moving forward with Millions to the bank accounts of Mr. Lee’s family and the victim’s family!!
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/convicted-toyota-driver-freed-prison-11340294
(ps: sorry I forgot to originally add the link!)
Admittedly, I’ve not followed the case, so what I know is from the first article I googled (since there were no links in the post)…but let me make sure I understand your accusation:
Since his lawyer was unable to predict the future (four years ago, we were still a long way from knowing what we know now about the Toyota acceleration problem) it’s evidence of a racial disparity? And to be clear – I think I’ve read as much as anybody on the topic – though Toyota’s handling of the problem was without question, improper and possibly criminal, I think it’s still not totally clear to what extent the acceleration problems are manufacturing/engineering problems vs. user error. There’s a lot of really bad science and deliberately misleading information on both sides.
Not to mention, that apparently Mr. Lee’s vehicle isn’t among the models actually included in the recalls.
But it must all be the racist white guys’ fault.
I don’t know enough about this to say anything in particular, but while you’re right people shouldn’t blame race on everything it’s important to also not forget that racism exists.
My sister was in a hardware store and she overheard a group of people talking about the black kids that drowned this week. They were talking about how great it was so many of them died at once since “we don’t need any more of those people.” They proceeded to joke about it too. Obviously they didn’t care about being such disgusting people around other white people like my sister. My sister was also called the n word when she brought non-white friends of her daughter to an East side pool (I’m not sure which one). When the police came (the bigots were so disgusted by non-whites in the pool they called the police) and said that they were fully allowed to go in, most of the pool cleared out.
Racism is alive, and I’d say a good 1/3 of the white people I know are openly racist behind closed doors. I’m a white friend, or a white relative, so I get to see it. It may not as often be as outrageous as the pool incident I mentioned, but while it’s important not to abuse the race card it would be foolish as well to ignore the realities: racism hasn’t gone away even if things have gotten largely better.