By AsianWeek staff and Associated Press
The trial of one of five men accused of raping a female University of Colorado student will be moved out of Boulder because pretrial publicity has made seating a jury difficult.
District Judge Carol Glowinsky on Feb. 16 granted the change of venue sought by lawyers representing Sonny Lee, 24. He is charged with kidnapping and sexual assault. District Attorney Mary Keenan said lawyers will meet in the next few days to find new dates and a location.
Keenan had objected to the request to move the trial, mainly because of the impact on the victim.
“But I actually had to concede it would have been very difficult” to seat a jury, she said.
Jury selection began on Feb. 12, when 97 prospective jurors were dismissed after filling out an 84-item questionnaire. They were asked about stereotypes they may have heard about Hmong, Vietnamese or Asians. Lee is Hmong American. Prospective jurors were also asked if they had heard about the gang rape or Lee, if they had ever been a victim of sexual assault, and if they had any connections with the criminal justice system. After two days of questioning potential jurors, attorneys dismissed 163 people. By Feb. 15, 194 of 226 prospective jurors were eliminated because of their knowledge of the case.
Keenan said the change of venue will cause a substantial delay.
Lee is accused in the Aug. 29, 1999, abduction and gang rape of a 20-year-old female student. Police said the woman was forced into a van and driven to a spot west of Boulder, where she was raped for about two hours and then released.
The random abduction and rape of the student garnered extensive media coverage as sketches of the six suspects were aired on television in Denver and Boulder, as police searched for the men.
The fact that all six suspects were Asian American males, and the victim a white female, increased tension among the largely educated, affluent populace, of whom 93 percent are white and 2.4 percent Asian American. The Boulder Daily Camera ran repeated descriptions of the suspects as “Asian males … black hair, brown eyes,” and it noted that the victim feared retaliation. Asian American men of all ethnicities came under suspicion.
Two suspects, Kao Nick Vang and Cheu Vang, were captured in Westminster on Sept. 4, 1999, and ten days later Steven Yang, Johnny Lee and Sonny Lee were captured in Green Bay, Wis. A sixth, Kather Yang, committed suicide when confronted by police in Green Bay on Sept. 16, 1999.
Steve Yang, 20, was sentenced to 32 years to life in prison; Chue Vang, 17, was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison; and Kao Vang, 19, was sentenced to 32 years.
Steve Yang and Kao Vang have asked to withdraw their guilty pleas.
The trial of Johnny Lee, 18, is awaiting a Colorado Supreme Court ruling on DNA evidence. |
