New science throws arson
convictions into doubt
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12/9/2006
By Robert Tanner, The Associated Press
EAST STROUDSBURG, Pa. — The clues were everywhere. A young woman lay
dead in a burned cabin at a church camp, while her father survived.
Most of the lessons taught to budding fire investigators stood out at
the scene. The local experts — the county fire marshal, a state-hired
fire analyst, a chemist — spoke without hesitation that it all proved
arson — and murder.
No one questioned their conclusion. It was a textbook case, and the
father, Han Tak Lee, was dealt a guilty verdict and a life sentence.
Except the textbooks were wrong. Within a few years of Lee's
conviction, scientific studies smashed decades of earlier, widely
accepted beliefs about how fires work and the telltale trail they leave
behind.
Today, fire investigators are taught that the clues relied upon in the
1989 investigation of the cabin fire don't prove anything more than an
accident.
And some of the leading U.S. experts on arson say that Lee was the
victim of a horrible tragedy, not a criminal. There could be hundreds
more like him, people wrongfully convicted of arson, these experts say.
Pennsylvania courts have repeatedly rejected the argument that the
prosecution's case was built on bad science.
"I never killed my daughter. I never set the fire. I'm not the right
person to be here," Lee, now 71, says through a translator at Rockview
medium-security prison in central Pennsylvania. "This is not arson.
This is an accident."
A definitive count isn't possible, but leading fire investigators
across the country estimate that there could be hundreds of mistaken
arson prosecutions, all built on the same ideas that were uprooted more
than a decade ago.
The new arson science could become the most powerful tool to reveal
wrongful convictions since DNA testing began overturning rape and
murder cases in 1989. Critics also say it's still happening, because
some investigators continue to prosecute cases based on discredited
methods.
"How do you know someone's guilty if you don't know a crime has been
committed?" says Richard Custer, a principal architect of a pivotal
document on arson that helped bring the changes to light.
Another widely known investigator, John J. Lentini, has been a
consultant on Lee's case, analyzing evidence and testimony.
His conclusion: "While the Commonwealth's witnesses may have believed
that they were testifying truthfully, the fact is that the jury was
misled by objectively false testimony."
The Lees were in Pennsylvania that morning 17 years ago because Han Tak
Lee and his wife had hoped to heal their oldest daughter's mental
problems.
Han Tak had come to New York City from South Korea and started a
clothing business, working six days a week until he could bring his
family over to join him.
Manic depression had surfaced a year or so after his oldest daughter,
Ji Yun, had immigrated with her mother. Medication had helped. But
things were unraveling again.
The family's Pentecostal pastor suggested the church retreat. Father,
daughter and preacher prayed until the wee hours of the morning.
Then, the fire — one that, to investigators, pointed clearly to Lee.
Part of the reason is what they were taught about arson in those days:
• Fires always burn up, not down.
• Fires that burn very fast are fueled by accelerants; "normal" fires
burn slowly.
• Arsons fueled by accelerants burn hotter than "normal" fires.
• The clues to arson are clear. Burn holes on the floor indicate
multiple points of origin. Finely cracked glass (called "crazed glass")
proves a hotter-than-normal fire. So does the collapse of the springs
in bedding or furniture, and the appearance of large blisters on
charred wood, known as "alligatoring."
Firefighters and investigators arrived at these conclusions through
decades of observation. But those beliefs had never been given close
scientific scrutiny, until the 1970s and 1980s.
Once researchers began to apply the scientific method to beliefs about
fire, they fell apart.
A major revelation came from greater understanding of a phenomenon
known as "flashover." When a fire burns inside a structure, it sends
heat and gases to the ceiling until it reaches a certain temperature —
and then in a critical transition, everything combustible in that space
will catch fire. Instead of a fire in a room, now there is a room on
fire.
When that happens, it can leave any number of signs that investigators
earlier thought meant arson — like the burn holes on the floor that
used to prove multiple starting points. And it can cause a fire to burn
down from the ceiling — not up.
Significantly, flashover can create very hot and very fast-moving
fires. And it can occur within just a few minutes, dashing the concept
that only arson fires fueled by accelerants can quickly rage out of
control.
The studies began to chip away at the old beliefs, but it took years.
Through the 1980s, texts at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg,
Md., still taught the traditional techniques.
It wasn't until 1992 that a guide by the National Fire Protection
Association — "NFPA921: Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations" —
clearly laid out, in a document relied upon by authorities nationwide,
that the earlier beliefs were wrong.
"It's not that they're bad investigators or there's been any conspiracy
to promulgate erroneous conclusions — it's just the way it was," says
Custer, the former associate director of the national Fire Research
Laboratory and one of the principal editors of the 1992 guide.
"How many years did we think the Earth was flat?"
In the hours before daybreak on July 29, 1989, police and firefighters
quickly became suspicious.
Han Tak Lee seemed calm. He didn't cry. He sat on a bench across from
the burning cabin with two bags of luggage at his feet.
State Trooper Thomas Jones, doubling as county fire marshal, wrote in
his report a week later: "Mr. LEE remained almost emotionless and while
in view of this officer made no attempts to console his wife (when she
arrived from New York later that day). Mrs. LEE on the other hand was
being escorted to the scene and upon nearing the burnt building almost
collapsed and had to be physically assisted from the scene."
Prosecutor E. David Christine Jr. argued Lee's demeanor was that of a
killer, not a grieving father.
But Koreans say that men traditionally don't express much emotion, and
never in public. And Lee is nothing if not traditional, his wife and
surviving daughter say.
Lee says now that, watching the cabin burn, he was overwhelmed and
stunned into silence.
"I found that I just lost my spirit and my mind there. It felt like all
the blood drained out of my body," he says. "In Korea, men are not
allowed to cry. If your daughter is suddenly found dead, there's
nothing you can do. You just lost your soul. You can't even think."
Lee's story didn't convince investigators. He claimed to have fallen
asleep exhausted after praying and woke to the smell of smoke. Fire was
in the small cabin's other bedroom, his daughter's bedroom. He ran out.
She wasn't outside. He ran back, called for her, didn't hear or see
her, thought she had already escaped. He threw the luggage out the
door. He banged on the bathroom door and, overcome by smoke and fire,
went out the back door.
With a crime already suspected, the pieces soon fit into place.
They found pour patterns on the floor that indicated multiple points of
origin, "alligatored" charring, crazed glass, damaged furniture
springs. Investigators had their evidence.
Lee's lawyer never disputed the conclusion of arson. He argued instead
that Ji Yun had started the fire herself to commit suicide.
The family has never accepted that. She viewed suicide as a sin, they
say.
Jurors didn't accept the defense attorney's argument, either. They
believed the experts.
On Sept. 17, 1990, they convicted Lee of murder. Several appeals before
Pennsylvania courts have won him no relief.
Christine, still Monroe County's district attorney, did not return
repeated phone calls. An assistant argued before the court that the new
science was, in effect, simply "two expert witnesses that have opposing
views." A Pennsylvania state court agreed and rejected Lee's claim.
Lee's attorneys appealed that decision on Nov. 27 to the state Supreme
Court.
Other experts have looked at Lee's case and agreed with Lentini's
conclusions. "That's a perfect example of a system run amok," says
David M. Smith, a former city bomb and arson investigator in Tucson,
who retired to start his own investigation firm.
How many could be wrongfully convicted of arson?
There are 500,000 structure fires overall a year; 75,000 of them are
labeled suspicious. Lentini, who has campaigned widely to improve
investigators' knowledge, says most experts he talks with believe the
accuracy of fire investigators is at best 80% — meaning as many as
15,000 mistaken investigations each year, and who knows how many
convictions.
The hardest part is that there's often no clear guilty party or
explanation, as DNA can provide. In the Lee case, another defense
investigator argued it started from a short in an electrical cord, but
Lentini says the hard evidence either burned up or was ignored by the
county investigators.
For the Lees, there's no getting past the tragedy that took Ji Yun. But
they still want one more chance from the justice system.
In prison, Han Tak Lee exudes a kind of desperate hope as he meets with
a reporter and translator. For the lone Korean speaker at the
2,061-inmate prison, it is a rare chance to hear his native language.
"I never regret," he says. "I have very strong faith. I will get out as
a free man."
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Copyright MIP
1999-2006
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