Free David Wong Support Committee

[KeJia Sista]

I was going to post yesterday about the Free David Wong Support Committee. I've been a member since 1996.

"The David Wong Support Committee (DWSC) was formed to fight for the freedom of David Wong, a Chinese immigrant who was unjustly convicted of a murder he did not commit. David's case exposes the systemic barriers of the criminal (in)justice system - that anti-immigrant sentiment, racism, and poverty impede justice. The DWSC aims to galvanize diverse communities in a collective effort to achieve justice!"

http://www.freedavidwong.org

A couple of hours after I tried to post about the committee, we were contacted by one of the lawyers and told that David Wong won his appeal!

"APPEALS COURT OVERTURNS DAVID'S CONVICTION!! See the top of the page for brief details. Press Conference Saturday, October 23, 2004 at 11am at Project REACH, 1 Orchard Street, NYC. All media and supporters are invited to attend! Please email us your questions about the decision. We could answer you or set up a FAQ section on the site to answer questions that people send us. The next step is for the District Attorney to announce whether he is going to pursue a retrial or not. We believe that doing so with the little evidence they have left would be a waste of taxpayer money and resources. If the DA does drop the case, David would then seek parole from his initial robbery conviction. The DWSC continues to fight for the rights of all immigrants, poor people, and people of color. The DWSC's mission statement focuses not just on freeing David, but also on exposing systemic barriers."

"Mo Jut Yi, Mo Tai Ping" - No Justice No Peace!

KeJia Sista

[Taliesin Stormheller]

Yea!!! Now that's what I'm talkin' about! 8)

[xian]

Thank god, this finally came through!

We showed the DWSC video at our University's MLK observance last year and it got quite a bit of response.

I was wondering, is the film going to be updated to reflect his release? Now that he has been vindicated, I'd love to see his story help free other folks from the same evils of the injustice system!

[KeJia Sista]

Thank god, this finally came through!

We showed the DWSC video at our University's MLK observance last year and it got quite a bit of response.

I was wondering, is the film going to be updated to reflect his release? Now that he has been vindicated, I'd love to see his story help free other folks from the same evils of the injustice system!

Before we celebrate prematurely...Monday David will have a hearing where the judge will decide if David is to be freed or recieve a new trial. They've already taken him back upstate to a prison further away from us. They made him sign a statement that his mail would not be forwarded.

Due to a law instituted by Pres. Clinton; when he is released there is a big possibility that David will be deported either to China or to Hong Kong. We are fighting this since he has not been in either place 23 years ago when he arrived here at the age of 19. The LEAST the USA can do after stealing over 20 years of his life, is to allow him to stay in this country.

When it comes to many issues, its all one Party, the Republicrats.

I have some pix from the press conference.

KeJia

[KeJia Sista]

Say prayers or think good thoughts. We're expecting a major decision very soon!

KeJia

[KeJia Sista]

We had a press conference for David yesterday at Project Reach in Chinatown. Channel 4 and 7 covered it but dropped the story in favor of Bernard Kerik discovering he had hired an undocumented immigrant and not paid taxes on her work.

The Chinese Press gave us good coverage (check out Singtao, Ming Pao gave us front page and color photo of the committee, and the Times covered it in Metro.

Note that in the NY Times story the crackers have not admitted they framed David, they claim to be letting him go because "he's only sitting around waiting to be deported."

I hope the Channel 4 coverage makes it to the TV. Davids niece Faye assailed the system through her tears. She denounced the corruption of the very people we are taught to respect; police, judges, DA's.

Because of the Terrorism Bill (which originated under Clinton I believe), even though the murder charge has been dropped; David is now facing deportation to China or Hong Kong - even though he hasn't been in China since he was 12. (Now 42). We'll be circulating a petition soon to ask that he remain in the USA - they took over a decade of his life in prison, THEY OWE HIM.

KeJia

Prosecutors Seek an Immigrant's Release
By DAVID W. CHEN

Published: December 11, 2004

Nearly two months after a state court overturned the murder conviction of David Wong, an illegal Chinese immigrant accused of stabbing a fellow inmate in an upstate prison in 1986, prosecutors in Plattsburgh, N.Y., announced yesterday that they had filed a motion to dismiss the charges.

If the motion is approved, as expected, by Judge Richard C. Giardino of Fulton County, it will mark the legal end of a case that has attracted the attention of Asian-Americans around the country. But any celebration for Mr. Wong might be short-lived and bittersweet, since he is expected to be deported to China, meaning that his first taste of freedom in two decades would be not in the United States, but in Hong Kong or China.

Mr. Wong, now 42, was serving time for armed robbery when he was charged with fatally stabbing Tyrone Julius at the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, about 17 miles west of Plattsburgh. And though there was no physical evidence or obvious motive, Mr. Wong was found guilty based on the testimony of two witnesses and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

Years later, Mr. Wong's case garnered the support of Asian-American advocates in New York City, who viewed his story as emblematic of a criminal justice system stacked against poor immigrants who barely speak English.

Subsequent articles in The New York Times and inquiries made by a Manhattan private investigator, combined with the reversal of testimony by one prosecution witness, also suggested that another inmate had killed Mr. Julius.

In the legal arena, though, Mr. Wong suffered setback after setback, none worse than a decision by Judge Timothy J. Lawliss of Clinton County Court in October 2003 that concluded there was not enough fresh evidence to merit a new trial, said one of Mr. Wong's lawyers, William E. Hellerstein, a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

But on Oct. 21, with Mr. Wong's legal options running out, a state appellate court unanimously overturned the conviction and returned the case to Clinton County Court, citing the reversal of testimony by a key witness, the lack of physical evidence and the insistence from former inmates and Mr. Julius's widow that Mr. Wong was innocent.

As a result, District Attorney Richard E. Cantwell of Clinton County, who did not handle the original trial, filed a 17-page motion yesterday to dismiss the charges.

In an interview, Mr. Cantwell - who is the third district attorney to handle the case - said that he still felt Mr. Wong's original trial had been fair. He also said that the remaining prosecution witness, a correction officer named Richard LaPierre, stood by his original testimony that he saw the stabbing from an 80-foot tower 120 yards away.

But Mr. Cantwell also said that there was a "ton of problems," especially the recantation of testimony by Peter DellFava, a former inmate and the disappearance of several items that had been gathered after Mr. Julius was attacked.

"It's done, it's over and that's the right thing to do," he said. "I think a jury will have a difficult time finding beyond a reasonable doubt that David Wong committed the murder."

Mr. Cantwell also noted that the Department of Justice had issued an order to deport Mr. Wong in 1994, meaning that he is scheduled to go from state prison to federal custody, whether he is freed or convicted again.

"Look, he has been incarcerated since 1983, and all he's doing is he's waiting to be deported," Mr. Cantwell said. "So what are we going to do? Keep him here forever?"

Mr. Wong's supporters, meanwhile, said that they were ecstatic and relieved that a case that they believed was a strong one from the outset had finally gone their way. But they acknowledged that they had sometimes worried that Mr. Wong would not prevail.

"It's gratifying," said Jaykumar A. Menon, one of Mr. Wong's lawyers, who works for the Center for Constitutional Rights in Manhattan. "This is Sisyphus triumphant."

The odyssey for Mr. Wong, a former Chinatown busboy who was serving 81/3 to 25 years for his part in the robbery of his boss's home on Long Island, began on a snowy afternoon in March 1986, when someone plunged a shank into Mr. Julius's neck. Of the 70 to 100 inmates in the area, only Mr. Wong and an inmate from Hong Kong, Tse Kin Cheung, were searched. Investigators found neither blood nor a weapon on either man.

After Mr. Cheung began writing to Asian-American community leaders, claiming that Mr. Wong had been framed, a group of New York City activists formed the David Wong Support Committee. And eventually, former inmates and others came forward to say that Mr. Julius was, in fact, murdered by a rival, Nelson Gutierrez, who died in 2000.

Yesterday, at a news conference in Chinatown, many of those activists thanked the people who had, in the words of one supporter, Patti Choy, "contributed to the fight" for more than a decade. But their fight was far from over, they added, because now, there is the matter of Mr. Wong's deportation.