The David Wong Support Committee's Statement About Judge Lawliss's 9/30/03 Decision To Deny A New Trial
NOTE: The following is a statement issued by the David Wong Support Committee right after receiving Judge Lawliss's decision.
October 6, 2003
STATEMENT OF OUTRAGE
David Wong Support Committee
On September 30, 2003, Judge Timothy Lawliss, acting judge of the Clinton County Court, announced his decision to deny David Wong’s motion to vacate the murder conviction for which he was framed in 1986.
The David Wong Support Committee is outraged by the unjust decision and forcefully denounces this action. The decision perpetuates the systemic barriers facing poor people and people of color who attempt to seek justice, and are shot down by a racist criminal injustice system that is focused on their disempowerment and stripping them of their rights and lives.
This decision is an affront to the Asian American community, as well as to those who believe in David’s innocence. However, Lawliss’s outrageous decision amounts to a wake-up call to escalate the fight for justice to an even higher and stronger level.
This ruling brings the criminal injustice system in Plattsburgh, where the decision was made, and in New York, as a whole, into grave disrepute. It questions its credibility, and ultimately, sanctions the 17 1/2-year-old cover-up that continues to be buried. The injustices continue to mount. An innocent man is in prison based on false testimony and Lawliss and Cantwell refused to grant him a new trial.
The evidence unquestionably proved that David is innocent. The only question was whether the criminal injustice system was going to right the wrong and free an innocent man. In essence, the injustice system was on trial, not David Wong, and it failed miserably. It is pitiful that David Wong continues to live in the stranglehold of the criminal injustice system’s lie.
The David Wong Support Committee will continue to fight every step of the way. We are not deterred by the Lawliss-Cantwell decision. The committee has maintained that the fight will not be won in the courtroom alone, as there are no harbored illusions that the criminal injustice system, by itself, will free David Wong.
The system has raised the ante and we are intensifying our grassroots efforts, the only means by which this case will be won, to build a stronger and broader movement to free David Wong.
The fight has just begun. Right The Wrong! Free David Wong!!
To contact us, send us email at freedavid@freedavidwong.org