Locked Away for 24 Years, an Exonerated Man Still Feels Imprisoned

Locked Away for 24 Years, an Exonerated Man Still Feels Imprisoned 

Locked Away for 24 Years, an Exonerated Man Still Feels Imprisoned


By KIRK SEMPLEMARCH 10, 2016

“I still think it’s totally unfair that I had to serve 24 years in prison,” Han Tak Lee, 81, said. “I’m innocent.” Credit An Rong Xu for The New York Times

Han Tak Lee, 81, spends much of his time alone in a small room in Queens. It is a ground-floor studio apartment with a kitchenette and a bathroom, right beside train tracks used by the Long Island Rail Road. Commuter trains roar by every so often, though the double-glazing of his windows reduces the noise to a gentle whoosh.


His cramped living situation invites a comparison to the way he spent most of the past quarter-century. From 1990 to 2014, Mr. Lee was locked away in a series of prisons in Pennsylvania, serving a life sentence for murdering his daughter in a fire. Two years ago, however, a judge exonerated him and ordered him freed after determining that his conviction was based on theories about arson that had later been discredited. An appellate court upheld the ruling in August.

Yet Mr. Lee, a free man now, still seems bound by his imprisonment. The experience weighs on him as he reckons with his past and considers the final stretch of his life. He admits to feeling bitterness.

“I still think it’s totally unfair that I had to serve 24 years in prison,” he said in an interview. “I’m innocent.”

He has been surviving on Social Security payments and, more so, on the largess of people who have sympathized with his plight. A support group that formed while he was in prison raised tens of thousands of dollars to help with his legal fees and, after his release, to help pay for his rent and living expenses. But that fund has nearly dried up, and Mr. Lee recently contacted Ron Kim, a Democratic state assemblyman, seeking assistance in finding subsidized housing.

Mr. Lee being led to State Police barracks in Pennsylvania in 1989. He was given a life sentence after the death of his daughter in a fire. Credit David W. Coulter/The Pocono Record, via Associated Press

“He wants to live with dignity for the rest of his life,” Assemblyman Kim said.

Though in his ninth decade, Mr. Lee, a Korean immigrant who became a naturalized American citizen, is not confronting the challenges of his current circumstances with anything resembling meekness.

He is angry at the justice system for locking him up and taking so many years of his life. He is resentful toward his ex-wife, who divorced him while he was in prison. He is estranged from his surviving daughter and her family, he said. He has accused the leadership of his former church of not sufficiently coming to his defense when he was being investigated, even as the church raised about $80,000 over the years to help pay for his legal representation. And he has alienated some of his most ardent supporters.

Chris Chang, the spokesman for the support group, said the prison experience had left Mr. Lee suspicious of everyone and their motives, leaving him prone to sudden changes of heart. This unpredictability has led some of his supporters to keep their distance, friends said.

“Like a volcano,” Mr. Chang said.

Mr. Lee is unapologetic. “I recognize my personality, but that’s because of the many experiences I’ve had,” he said. “I am resolute. I am different.”

He added: “I was fully exonerated. It gave me the confidence to be more vocal.”

In two interviews with Mr. Lee at his apartment, he seemed mostly cheery and good-natured, patiently answering questions about his life in Korean and rudimentary English and laughing frequently. His mood darkened somewhat only when the conversation turned to the subject of his ex-wife and daughter.“I don’t want to talk about my family,” he said sharply. (A member of the support committee provided a phone number for Mr. Lee’s daughter, but calls went unanswered.)

Kyung Tahk Sohn, who attended high school in Seoul with Mr. Lee and is a co-president of the support committee, said: “To be frank with you, Mr. Lee has a very special character. He has a very quick temper. That’s why his words hurt them here and there.

“In my case, I’ve known him a long time, I feel like he’s my older brother. That’s why I just help him and whatever he says I try to understand him and read his mind. That’s why I’m the only one who can talk to him freely.”

The fire that killed Mr. Lee’s daughter occurred in July 1989 at a religious retreat in the Poconos run by the church he attended at the time.

Mr. Lee, who ran a clothing store and lived with his then-wife and two daughters in Sunnyside, Queens, had taken his oldest daughter, Ji Yun, to the retreat at the urging of the church’s pastor. Ms. Lee, who was 20 and an art student at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, had severe mental illness. He hoped the trip would help her.

Early one morning, a fire broke out in their cabin. The authorities found Mr. Lee sitting stoically outside the burning cabin with two packed bags, The ABA Journal, a publication of the American Bar Association, reported in an article about the case. His behavior, deemed strangely passive by investigators, became part of the prosecution’s case against him. Ji Yun’s burned body was found inside the cabin.

At the trial, prosecutors, citing the testimony of fire experts, argued that the charring patterns and glass fracturing indicated a deliberately set fire, and that the arsonist had started the fire in at least eight spots in the cabin using a mixture of home fuel oil and another accelerant, according to news reports. One expert witness said a chemical analysis of Mr. Lee’s clothes suggested a link to a plastic glove and a jug said to have been used to pour the fuel.

Mr. Lee at his home in Murray Hill, Queens. Credit An Rong Xu for The New York Times

In defending Mr. Lee, his lawyer argued that Ji Yun had set the fire herself. Mr. Lee said he had been asleep when the flames broke out and had unsuccessfully tried to rescue his daughter.

The jury sided with prosecutors, and he was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to life in prison.

His case became a cause célèbre among Koreans in the United States, and his trial was closely followed in South Korea. After his arrest, members of the Korean population in New York formed the support group, called the Free Han Tak Lee Committee, and in the ensuing years raised money to help pay his legal fees.

Mr. Lee said he was very isolated in prison, keeping largely to himself and living for years in his own cell. He never encountered another Korean during his time behind bars, he said.

In 2014, a magistrate judge in Harrisburg, Pa., found that long-held beliefs about the science of fire, which were at the core of the prosecution’s case, had been discredited. A federal judge adopted the magistrate judge’s recommendation that Mr. Lee’s conviction and sentence be vacated, and he was released. Prosecutors unsuccessfully appealed the decision.


After he left prison, Mr. Lee moved into his current home, just off Northern Boulevard, in Murray Hill, a middle-class neighborhood with a large Korean immigrant population. He said he chose to live there because it was near his sister, a Long Island resident.

Four days a week, he goes to a senior center where, he said, he takes exercise and dance classes and eats meals.

Sometimes, in the evening, he meets with members of his current church. But otherwise he is mostly by himself in his apartment, which is dominated by a large bed with a saffron-colored bedspread. The room is cluttered with the flotsam and jetsam of a curious man — or a man who for years was deprived of possessions: stacks of printed material neatly piled on tables and a small desk, including books, magazines, fliers and store brochures; a quiver of small American and South Korean flags; an empty Starbucks cup; pill bottles; a paper Burger King crown. A framed naturalization certificate is one of the few adornments on the walls. His television is often on.

Pennsylvania does not provide compensation to people wrongly convicted of a crime; Mr. Lee has not filed a lawsuit over his wrongful imprisonment. But his lawyers “are looking at whether he has a remedy available,” said Peter Goldberger, a lawyer who has represented him for about 15 years.

The support committee has been paying his rent — $1,000 per month — and giving him a monthly allowance of $700, Mr. Chang said. But with the money running out, the members are trying to find alternative, cheaper housing for Mr. Lee.

Mr. Kim, whose Assembly district includes Murray Hill, said city officials had done a full assessment of Mr. Lee’s living situation and health and were considering his case. In addition, the assemblyman is working with community groups to figure out ways to help him.

“I’m putting myself in his shoes and trying to understand about how he was able to cope with being locked away for so many years and to be back and finally have his freedom, yet is struggling to live with some sort of integrity,” Mr. Kim said. “There’s such a feeling of injustice.”

But Mr. Lee is far from giving up. “Mental focus,” he declared. “Endurance.”