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.

In 1986, David Wong was framed in upstate New York for a murder he did not commit. After fifteen years, the David Wong Support Committee (DWSC) uncovered how prison officials set up David. The prosecution's star witness was coached to lie and dozens of witnesses came forward to identify the real killer and motive. However, in 2003, David Wong was denied a new trial.

David and the DWSC have always maintained David is innocent. The DWSC is determined to break the silence on his frame-up, and to gain his freedom and justice.

In June 1984, David Wong, was imprisoned for armed robbery, his first arrest. After being sentenced, David was transferred to Clinton Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

On March 12, 1986, an African-American inmate named Tyrone Julius was stabbed to death in the prison where David was held. The murder took place in a yard filled with around 700 similarly dressed inmates. Although he had nothing to do with the stabbing, prison officials framed David for the murder of Julius even though no physical evidence connects him to the murder: nobody found the murder weapon, none of the victim's blood was found on David, no motive was established, and he did not know the victim. The only evidence that now exists comes from one questionable witness.

Prison officials were under pressure to blame someone for the murder and found a scapegoat by framing David. David was an obvious target because he was one of two Asians in the prison, he spoke little English, he had no family in the United States, and he could not defend himself or hire a lawyer.

In fact, David was not given a qualified interpreter of Fukienese, his native dialect. Instead, he was given an untrained interpreter who only spoke Mandarin, a dialect David barely knew.

The proof of David Wong's innocence was found through a two-year search by a private investigator that the David Wong Support Committee hired.

The state relied on only two witnesses: Richard LaPierre and Peter Dellfava. LaPierre is a prison guard who claims that he saw the murder from a prison tower over 400 feet away without his binoculars. Dellfava is an inmate who originally claimed that he saw David attack Julius from just fifteen feet away.

In 2001, fourteen years after testifying against David Wong, Peter Dellfava finally admitted that he lied at David's trial. Dellfava said that a prison sergeant coached him to lie. Dellfava did not see David on the day of the murder. That night, a sergeant called Dellfava out of his cell and asked if he saw what happened. At first, Dellfava went with the odds and said he supposedly saw a black person commit the murder. The sergeant asked "It was an oriental guy, wasn't it?" and proceeded to coach Dellfava into saying that David was the killer. In exchange, Dellfava demanded and received a transfer to a safer prison and a letter that helped him receive parole on his first try.

David's case now rests solely on LaPierre's story. It is difficult to believe that he saw the real killer without binoculars from over 400 feet away or that he kept his eye on the killer, who mingled among 700 similarly dressed inmates after the murder. LaPierre's story also contains serious flaws; for example, he testified that the killer wore dark gloves and had white hands, but he never saw the suspect remove his gloves. He also said at various times that the killer appeared to be White or looked Asian. When a New York Times reporter wrote LaPierre of the new evidence, LaPierre replied, "If there is all this new evidence, then surely a new trial should be held."

Nineteen witnesses have sworn that David Wong did not commit the murder. Several were in the prison yard and identified the killer by name. Two heard the real killer confess to the crime afterwards. The victim's widow corroborated the real killer's motive for the murder. One inmate overheard correction officers talk about how they were going "to give the body to the chink."

The victim's widow is convinced of David's innocence and corroborates the real killer's motive: she knows that the victim had a fight with Dominicans years earlier. The real killer has confessed that the killing was revenge for that fight. The widow tried to investigate the murder but stopped after receiving threatening phone calls from someone with a Latino accent. Judge Lawliss violated his duty to consider all the evidence and ignored the widow in his decision.

Shortly after the murder, approximately eight prison guards physically attacked David. They handcuffed David's hands behind his back and they threw him face-down onto a table and punched him in the face and head. During the beating, David was warned to stop writing to people outside the prison for help. The guards fractured David's nose and broke one of his toes. When David asked for a doctor, they punched him and refused to get medical help.

In September 2003, Judge Timothy Lawliss ignored the overwhelming evidence and denied David's demand for a new trial. In his decision, Lawliss rejected every witness that testified on David's behalf, calling each of them "unreliable and incredible." Yet he simultaneously praised the prison guard who was standing over 400 feet away without using his binoculars as a "disinterested, unbiased and credible witness." Lawliss chose to maintain the cover-up that began 18 years ago in upstate New York.

On September 8, 2004, David's appeal of Lawliss's decision will be heard in Albany, NY. The issues that will be argued include whether Lawliss's ruling was unsupported by the evidence and whether Lawliss should have stepped down from the case because of his personal and business relationships with District Attorney Richard Cantwell, the prosecutor in David's case, and his wife.

The third issue that will be argued is whether David's constitutional rights were violated because the prosecutor has never given him a complete copy of the NY State Police's 23-page report (a BCI report) about their investigation of the murder. A complete account of how a witness initially named the real killer before taking back his accusation is documented in 16 pages of the report that have not been provided by the prosecutor.

"I did not see the murder happen at all, let alone David Wong commit it. I never seen David Wong before until the day I saw him in court. I did it so I could get transferred to a medium-security prison five miles from home, where my wife was residing at the time. And also I was guaranteed to make my first parole appearance . . . I need to get this straightened out. I need to do whatever I can do to get this right." January 2001

Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, Asian American Bar Association of New York, Asian Americans for Equality, Asian Law Caucus, APALA AFL-CIO NY, Asian American Legal Center of Southern California, CAAAV-Organizing Asian Communities, Flushing Greens, NALC Br 294, Organization of Chinese Americans Ð National, Long Island, and NY Chapters

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