Criminal forensic expert Henry Lee has been accused of “fabricating evidence” in a 1985 murder case, which allegedly led to the wrongful imprisonment of two men in Connecticut, USA, for several decades.
According to an Associated Press report, a U.S. judge ruled on July 21st that Lee has a duty to pay damages, with the amount to be determined by a jury.
The report states that Connecticut residents Ralph Birch and Shawn Henning were convicted of murdering 65-year-old Everett Carr on December 1, 1985. One piece of evidence relied upon was testimony provided by Lee, stating that a towel found in Carr’s home had blood stains.
Birch was sentenced to 55 years in prison, and a retrial was ordered more than 30 years later. Birch was released in 2019, and Henning, who was only 17 at the time of the crime, received probation in 2018. After their murder convictions were overturned, they filed wrongful conviction lawsuits against Lee, eight police investigators, and the town of New Milford.
Police personnel and New Milford will face a jury trial, whereas the jury will only determine the amount of compensation in Lee’s case because the plaintiffs’ request for a summary judgment was granted. The judge said Lee could not claim immunity as he did not file a timely immunity argument.
After the conviction was overturned in 2020, Lee stated that in his 57-year forensic career, he had investigated over 8,000 cases and had never been accused of intentionally providing false testimony. He said, “This is the first case in which I have had to defend myself.”
However, the judge pointed out that Lee claimed to have conducted a blood reaction test on the towel, but there is no video or written record showing that such a test was ever performed. Moreover, actual tests conducted showed that the stains were not blood.
The 84-year-old Lee, former director of the Connecticut Forensic Laboratory, has not responded to the court’s latest judgment. His other cases, including one where he was accused of removing evidence from a murder scene without proper procedure, are also under review.
Born in Rugao, Jiangsu, Lee is a Chinese-American criminal forensics expert who graduated from the “Central Police University” in Taiwan and holds a master’s and doctorate degree in biochemistry from New York University. In 1998, Lee became the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Safety, making him the first Chinese-American to hold the highest position in a state police department in the US.
Lee has worked on many significant global cases, including the assassination of President Kennedy, Nixon’s Watergate scandal, Clinton’s Lewinsky scandal, the “9/11” incident, the O.J. Simpson murder case, the forensic investigation of the Yugoslavian genocide, and Taiwan’s “3.19 Shooting” incident involving then Vice President Annette Lu.