Key Evidence Overlooked in Koua Fong Lee Trial?

SAINT PAUL, Minn. - Koua Fong Lee, who is convicted in a deadly crash involving a Toyota Camry, continues his fight for a new trial.

Well-known Minnesota attorney Ron Meshbesher testified that during Lee's original trial, he was represented by ineffective counsel and that his own lawyer helped a jury convict the father of four of criminal vehicular homicide.

Since the horrific accident that killed three people, Lee‘s story has never changed. Yet without his client's permission, Lee’s original attorney told the jury that he “clearly had his foot on the accelerator instead of the break.”

But in fact, he had known all along the exact opposite was true. A letter from the insurance company that inspected Lee’s 1996 Toyota Camry even showed that he was trying to brake at the time of the accident, but it was never brought up in court.

Meshbesher testified that Lee’s original defense attorney Tracy Eichorn-Hicks failed to meet the standard of care by not fully investigating the facts of the case. He never presented any evidence to try and explain the sudden acceleration or dispute the claim that Lee’s car did not have anti-lock brakes which would have explained why there were no skid marks.

When prosecutors called Eichorn-Hicks he said that he and Lee did discuss his defense strategy to try for a lesser charge of careless driving. He said he didn’t think they could win the case if they couldn’t explain to the jury why car continued to accelerate if Lee was hitting the brakes.

"Because if I went in front of a jury and said he hit the brake and was on the brake and all the experts said the brakes worked, how are you going to explain the increase of 25 mph?" said Eichorn-Hicks. "That’s the question everybody says, 'why didn’t you go this other direction?' Because it doesn’t explain what happened."

In light of what he now knows about unintended sudden acceleration, Lee's original attorney says, he thinks Lee should get a new trial. He says the pieces of the puzzle now fit together.