Fong Lee was driving home from church with his family on June 10, 2006. He exited the freeway and slammed into a van stopped at the top of the exit ramp. Two people died at the scene, and a third died later. Koua Fong Lee was charged and convicted of negligent vehicular homicide.

Now it appears that Koua Fong Lee’s claim that he was not at fault in the accident may be legitimate. According to an investigator hired by Mr. Lee’s lawyer, Mr. Lee was, in fact, braking (to no avail) when he crashed. (Inspector: Toyota Driver was Braking). I am not qualified to know whether the inspector’s conclusions are accurate. Certainly, one of the prosecution’s experts disagreed (at least initially). The Koua Fong Lee case is instructive for several reasons:

As a former prosecutor and the past Chair of the Board of the Innocence Project of Minnesota, I am acutely aware of a potential for mistakes. (ipmn.org) Even in the best of justice systems – like Minnesota’s – innocent people can be convicted.

Koua Fong Lee’s case is not the typical case of actual innocence where someone is convicted of a crime that was committed by someone else. In Mr. Lee’s case, there is no doubt that he was driving when he crashed.

Still, the lessons of any wrongful conviction are profound. When an innocent person is convicted, a double injustice is done: the innocent is incarcerated while the guilty remains free. The financial costs of a wrongful conviction are substantial. It costs approximately $30,000 to keep someone in prison for a year. When the guilty person is finally caught, the system pays for prosecution and imprisonment a second time. For the innocent person there are ongoing costs – the disruption that a wrongful conviction places on their family, and in many cases the loss of the primary wage earner. These losses affect us all.

These costs are just some of the many reasons why being tough on crime means being aware of the awesome power the prosecutor wields. Being tough on crimes means asking hard questions while being alert to the need to do justice for all.