From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry: Parts V–VI

The Wayne County prosecutor's office officially deemed it a “public nuisance," a legal term for a criminal act having occurred on the premises.

On September 11, 1986—almost two years after Ebens had been sentenced to twenty-five years in jail—the court of appeals agreed unanimously to overturn that conviction.

Due to the "saturation publicity" over the Vincent Chin killing, Ronald Ebens "cannot obtain a fair and impartial trial," she ruled.

About ninety Asian Americans attended a midnight candle vigil and prayer service at the St. Monica Roman Catholic Church in Cincinnati on the night before the official start of the new trial.

Ebens's defense attorneys claimed the tapes were proof that Chan had coached the three witnesses to embellish their stories with false claims.

Memory is not a videotape you replay. Memory is something that your brain creates...and memory is very susceptible to influence, and you can change your memory especially when you're in a group like that.

To this day, Gary Koivu remains adamant that he always told the truth.

And then there was a subtle language issue that Chan believed may have given the impression that she was coaching the witnesses.

She was not familiar with American idioms and expressions.

For example, when she told Koivu, Siroskey, and Choi that they needed to "get your stories straight," she did not realize that the phrase "get your stories straight" in American English had a negative connotation—that it implied lying.

"So they understood perfectly there was nothing in there that would implicate me or show that I was coaching. And I wasn't.”

"I'm not accusing people of perjury,” Eaman said. "I'm just saying their memories were helped.”

"It takes a certain sophistication to discern whether it was coaching or legal questions being discussed," she said.

"It takes a certain sophistication to discern whether it was coaching or legal questions being discussed," she said.

An inconsolable Lily refused to accept the acquittal.

“I thought it would be powerful to have intimate family photos with the uncovering of old documents and old photographs that my family had of Vincent Chin,” he said.

The headline read, FROM OUR READERS: AMERICA BREAKS ITS PROMISE TO LILY CHIN.
"What a sad and poignant final chapter to the Vincent Chin case," one reader wrote.

“She fought valiantly to stay as independent as she could.”

On June 15, 2002, Helen Zia delivered the eulogy for Lily Chin at her memorial service at the William Sullivan Funeral Home in Southfield, Michigan.

He claimed the accusations of harboring racial bias because of the auto industry at the time were "the biggest fallacy."

He still owes the Chin estate more than $8 million in accrued interest since 1987 for the $1.5 million settlement in the unlawful death civil suit, which he can never pay.

The Chin estate long ago put a lien on Ebens's house.

(A lien is a legal claim over a person's property as collateral until a debt is paid off or settled.)

Helen Zia and other members of the American Citizens for Justice received phone calls and letters from people all over the country asking them to keep fighting. They included Minoru Yamasaki, the renowned architect who designed the World Trade Center, who would later speak at an ACJ event.

"Some people continue to believe and to perpetuate the harmful notion that Asian Americans are the 'model minority' that does not encounter racism, discrimination, or hate crimes," Zia said.

In 1991 the Asian Pacific American Legal Center (APALC), the Asian Law Caucus (ALC), and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) formed the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, known today as the Asian American Justice Center.

His case inspired veteran Detroit Free Press journalists John Castine and David Ashenfelter to write an exhaustive, six-part investigative series on manslaughter sentences in Michigan.

Yale Kamisar, a University of Michigan law professor, told the Detroit Free Press that it was not unusual for one person to receive probation and another to receive life in prison for manslaughter. "That's the way it is," Kamisar said. "There's no getting around it: there's enormous disparity in sentencing."

"At [the] time of the Chin case, there wasn't an automatic right for the victim’s family to give testimony about the victim," explained Roland Hwang. "Now it's just a part of the sentencing process; it's so ingrained that no one thinks about the time when we didn't have that. Thirty-five years ago we didn't have that."

But today, thanks to Vincent's legacy, Asian Americans are fighting back by posting videos and photos on social media to make sure the world is a witness, and that the perpetrators are caught.