Man to be released after being jailed due to faulty Toyota

The Toyota recall situation is all the rage this week with Congressional hearings and such. So here’s a timely little story…a Minnesota man was sentenced to eight years in jail after an accident which killed three. He claimed it was his Toyota’s brakes getting stuck. No one believed him. Guess who feels like silly geese now!

Ever since his 1996 Toyota Camry shot up an interstate ramp, plowing into the back of an Oldsmobile in a horrific crash that killed three people, Koua Fong Lee insisted he had done everything he could to stop the car.

A jury didn’t believe him, and a judge sentenced him to eight years in prison. But now, new revelations of safety problems with Toyotas have Lee pressing to get his case reopened and his freedom restored. Relatives of the victims — who condemned Lee at his sentencing three years ago — now believe he is innocent and are planning to sue Toyota. The prosecutor who sent Lee to prison said he thinks the case merits another look.

“I know 100 percent in my heart that I took my foot off the gas and that I was stepping on the brakes as hard as possible,” Lee said in an interview Wednesday at the state prison in Lino Lakes. “When the brakes were looked at and we were told that nothing was wrong with the brakes, I was shocked.”

At his 2007 trial, Lee testified he was certain he tried to brake. But a city mechanic testified the brakes worked fine, and Carruthers, the prosecutor, argued Lee must have hit the gas by mistake. Lee’s attorney at trial, Tracy Eichorn-Hicks, seemed to concede as much, arguing Lee’s actions fell short of gross negligence.

I’m glad the “Toyota Defense” worked in this guy’s favor. It was overdue to work since the “Uh, This Guy Is Asian, Do We Even Need the Mechanic to Check the Brakes?” defense was entirely too effective against him the first time.

Is there any bigger screwup of a major formerly beloved company than this Toyota thing? For all the bells and whistles a car can have these days, there are two fundamental features cars really need to have: Go and Stop. If you lose 50% of those in your car, it’s a pretty big problem. The only way Toyota’s perpetual acceleration problem would be okay is if you’re driving a Delorean. Then you get to just make out with your own mother in the past and call it a day.

‘Toyota defense” might rescue jailed Minnesota man [Associated Press]

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