By Sharon Silke Carty
USA TODAY
SAINT PAUL, Minn. — A Minnesota man serving eight years in prison for a crash of his 1996 Toyota Camry that killed three people is seeking a new trial in light of Toyota’s recent recalls. And he now has some unlikely supporters: Some of the jurors who helped put him away.
Kuoa Fong Lee, 32, was convicted of vehicular manslaughter in the 2006 crash. Lee, a Hmong immigrant who came to the U.S. in 2004 from Thailand, was exiting a highway on his way home from church. He says that when he tried to slow down, the car accelerated.
Police estimate he was going between 72 mph and 92 mph when he struck an Oldsmobile carrying five people. Two people in the car died at the scene -- a father and his 9-year-old son. A 6-year-old relative’s neck was broken, and she died a year and a half later.
Lee, who had been driving for just one year when the accident occurred, said he tried to step on the brakes but nothing happened. An expert found nothing wrong with the brakes, so prosecutors argued he must have been pressing on the accelerator instead.
Lee’s attorney, Brent Schafer, says he hopes to be in court arguing for a new trial as soon as April. While his case may be the first such Toyota-based appeal to be heard, it is unlikely to be the last. Schafer says he’s already been contacted by lawyers in two other similar cases -- one in Oregon, and one in New Jersey.
“I can’t believe there’d be a jury who would believe (Fong) accidentally hit the accelerator over there being a Toyota defect,” Schafer says. “Now, it’s almost insulting to think these cases are caused by the drivers. ... If there’s something good from all of this, it’s that an innocent guy could be released.”
This week, three jurors, speaking to news outlets in the Minneapolis area, seemed to agree, saying that if they had known there was a possible defect in the car, their verdict would have changed. “People need to be aware that if we were presented with evidence back then that there could have been an issue, I believe things would have been different,” a juror told Minneapolis TV station KARE. The juror asked to be identified only as Juror Number Six.
Toyota did not return a call for comment. A relative of the victims also would not comment, but some have spoken publicly in support of a retrial for Lee.
Lee’s car was not equipped with electronic throttle controls that have been a focus in Toyota acceleration discussions. His Camry had a traditional gas pedal that controlled the throttle mechanically with a cable.
But some 1996 Camrys also were recalled for acceleration issues. Shortly after the new models hit the market, Toyota recalled 5,145 of them for cruise control equipment that failed “to hold the speed set by the driver, and can accelerate above the intended set speed.”
Sean Kane, president of Safety Research & Strategies, a company which does research for trial lawyers, says he’s struggled for a long time to get the public to believe that sudden acceleration is a real problem.
“People have been uniformly dismissed by law enforcement, government, the automakers,” he says. “The consumer voice has been tamped down by everybody. But for the first time now, it’s being taken seriously.”
Copyright 2010 Gannett Company, Inc.