Chol Soo Lee

Chol Soo Lee (August 15, 1952 – December 2, 2014) was a Korean American immigrant who was wrongfully convicted for the 1973 murder of Yip Yee Tak, a San Francisco Chinatown gang leader, and sentenced to life in prison.

While in prison, he was sentenced to death for the killing of another prisoner, Morrison Needham, though Chol Soo claimed self-defense.

Chol Soo served ten years of his sentence for the killing of Yip Yee Tak, of which he was later acquitted, eight of those on death row.

Investigative reporting by K. W. Lee sparked the formation of the Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, which spurred a national pan-Asian movement.

Lee was born in Seoul, Korea in 1952, the son of a Korean woman who was raped and abandoned by her family.

His mother then married a US soldier and emigrated to America, leaving Lee with an aunt and uncle.

In 1964 she returned to Korea to bring her twelve-year-old son to the US.

Not speaking English or having parents to guide him, he had a difficult life.

The San Francisco public school system and juvenile authorities declared that Lee was mentally disturbed by 1965, diagnosing him as an adolescent schizophrenic and committing him to the McAuley Institute at St. Mary's Medical Center after a suicide attempt while being held at juvenile hall.

He was later admitted to Napa State Hospital in March 1966 for three months, then transferred to a foster home in Hayward after being declared sane.

Lee ran away from his foster home in October 1966; after he was picked up by authorities, he served a 13 month sentence with the California Youth Authority starting in the summer of 1967, leaving him with limited education and experience in America outside of detention facilities and mental hospitals.

Lee's photograph was among the mugshots selected by the witnesses as the potential gunman, but the mugshot of Lee that was picked dated to 1969.

A subsequent autopsy recovered .38 caliber bullets from Tak's body.

The .38 Special had been taken during a robbery of the Sun Sing Theater in Chinatown.

Ballistic comparison to rounds test fired indicated the .38 Special recovered from Beckett Alley was the murder weapon.

The day before Tak was killed, police officers responded to reports of gunfire at an apartment on Broadway rented by Lee; they removed a bullet from the wall facing the window of Lee's apartment.

Lee was arrested at approximately 11:00 pm on June 7 as he returned to his apartment.

At the time of his arrest, Lee was carrying a Colt Python .357 revolver and had 41 rounds of .38 caliber ammunition in his pocket.

According to the arresting plainclothes officer, as Lee was being handcuffed, he said "Go ahead and kill me. I would be rather off — I would be better off."

Lee testified he made the statement after being whipped across the nose with the bag of .38 caliber bullets.

During the drive to the Hall of Justice, Lee added "You guys are always picking me up. Last time it was robbery. this time it's murder. And I was just going home [to Korea] tomorrow."

According to Lee, after he was advised again of his rights at the Hall of Justice and requested a lawyer, Inspectors Frank Falzon and Jack Cleary told him that if his story checked out, he would be released and would not need an attorney, which is when Falzon and Cleary began recording their conversation.

Placed in a lineup on June 11, three of the five witnesses picked out Lee as the killer; however, of the mugshots identified by the witnesses shortly after the shooting, only Lee was brought into the lineup.

A SFPD criminologist tied the bullet recovered from the wall across from Lee's apartment with the purported murder weapon on June 15, but later recanted after an independent criminologist proved they did not match; when pressed, the SFPD criminologist stated he had made "a contrary conclusion because he felt it was necessary to obtain a conviction."

At the time, Lee was under probation from a charge of grand theft from a person; he had pleaded guilty in December 1971 and was sentenced to 180 days in county jail and three years' probation in January 1972.

The probation portion of his sentence started on June 5, 1972.

Lee was arrested on June 7, 1973, for the murder of Yip Yee Tak.

Tak, a youth advisor for the Wah Ching organized crime organization, was gunned down in the early evening of Sunday, June 3, 1973, as part of the continuing gang war between the Wah Ching and Joe Boys.

Tak was shot at the intersection of Pacific and Grant, near the Ping Yuen Housing Projects.

According to an eyewitness, Tak was shot from behind; after Tak fell, the killer ran east along Pacific, downhill towards Columbus.

Shortly afterward, police responded to the scene at approximately 8:10 pm (17 minutes before sunset), and an unrecorded witness pointed out the empty five-shot .38 Special revolver used by the killer had been discarded in Beckett Alley, where it was recovered.

Five witnesses were taken to the police station to view mugshots; three had witnessed the shooting, and two saw a man wearing the clothing (described by the first three witnesses) moving away from Pacific and Grant; all five were white males.

The San Francisco Public Defender's Office had filed a motion for discovery on August 30, 1973, and followed up with a motion for a change of venue on September 4,; the trial court granted the motion for discovery and denied the change of venue, but was overruled by the Appeal Court on February 13, 1974, which issued an order to grant the change of venue.

However, the Public Defender's Office realized the change of venue would not aid their client and asked to withdraw the change of venue motion on March 21, which was denied even though the hearing to investigate the feasibility of a change of venue had not yet been held.

Hintz accepted the assignment contingent on assistance from the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, which never materialized.

Clifford Gould, a public defender from the San Francisco Public Defender's Office was appointed to Lee's defense in June 1973 after Lee's arrest, but withdrew after the trial venue was moved to Sacramento; Lee was subsequently assigned Hamilton Hintz, a public defender from Sacramento, on April 2, 1974.

Although the San Francisco Public Defender's Office was provided with the names of witnesses who could provide an alibi for Lee's whereabouts at the time of the shooting, that office failed to follow up with those witnesses, and they were never contacted to provide statements and were no longer available to testify by the time the trial began on June 3, 1974.

Mr. Hintz was later faulted for ineffective counsel, as he had called Inspector Frank Falzon as a defense witness and asked Falzon if he knew of any motive why Tak was killed; Falzon seized the opportunity to create a series of incriminating statements at Lee's trial.

The trial court was also faulted for not allowing Lee to withdraw the "coercive change of venue".

Chol Soo finally won his freedom in 1983 through the help of the Free Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee and Tony Serra.