Murder With My Husband - 199. The Murder of Vincent Chin

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

In this episode, Payton dives into the case of Vincent Chin, and how his death led to outrage when his killer gets away with it.  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Listen on apple: https://apple.co/3sMXYum Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6GaodpBsSpBuUMhmEXhjK2?si=67c9faf80cbf4fed More social links and AD DISCOUNT CODES: https://linktr.ee/murderwithmyhusband Case Source:  “From A Whisper to a Rallying Cry” by Paula Yoo The New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/news/essay/the-many-afterlives-of-vincent-chin AsiaSociety.org - https://asiasociety.org/blog/asia/35-years-after-vincent-chins-murder-how-has-america-changed CNN - https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/23/us/vincent-chin-death-40-anniversary-cec/index.html Zinn Education Project - https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/vincent-chin-hate-crime AllThatsInteresting.com - https://allthatsinteresting.com/vincent-chin History.com - https://www.history.com/news/vincent-chin-murder-asian-american-rights NPR - https://www.npr.org/2022/06/19/1106118117/vincent-chin-aapi-hate-incidents NY Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/vincent-chin-anti-asian-attack-detroit.html Huffington Post - https://www.huffpost.com/entry/who-killed-vincent-chin-documentary-anti-asian-violence_n_6054aa02c5b6bd95117c9980 NBC News - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/who-vincent-chin-history-relevance-1982-killing-n771291 PBS - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/classroom/daily-news-lessons/2022/06/this-june-marks-40-years-after-vincent-chins-murder Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to an ONO media podcast. Hey everybody welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Peyton Moreland. Can I get it, Moreland? And he's the husband? Yeah, I'm the husband. Okay everyone if you're watching on YouTube right now please go give this video a thumbs up and subscribe, turn on notifications, just get us to the top of the algorithm. Let's go! And if you are listening on podcast and you can leave leave us a review. And yeah, that's my call out for today.

I know we say it all the time, but guess what? We just gotta. We gotta keep saying it. Hope everyone's doing great, back in action, feeling a lot better, hoping our voices don't sound as nasal anymore. Good to go. Like for a couple of weeks, but our bodies did it. Drone bodies. Or recovering. Also just remind her real quick, we have bonus content on Apple subscriptions and Patreon. So go sign up for those if you want.

Add free and bonus content. All the announcements we got for everybody today. You know next week's episode is episode 200 of Murder with My Husband. Two Rick and Hundred. Obviously that's not including the bonus episodes that are on Our that means we've been doing it for 200 weeks would that be correct then? Well the first one we first started we were doing two weeks, so

That is true. I forgot about that. I think technically no Yeah, we're technically probably out at like 190 but still Technically no. Yeah, we're technically probably out at like 190. But still 200 episodes of Murder with My Has Been. When we started, do you ever think like 200 regular episodes? The lot of episodes and here we are. Come back every single week, hanging out with you guys, we really appreciate it.

It does just feel like a dream. All right, do you have your 10 seconds? Oh man, good old 10 seconds. Honestly, just kind of getting back in the working mode. We had a couple birthdays for family, so we've been doing that. We actually finally did Christmas with my mom because, Peyton and I were sick,

so we had to wait until just a couple of days ago. Finally, the Christmas with her, we did some present exchanges, and I worked out for the first time again yesterday because I'm healthy. It was really hard. It was so hard. Oh, the crap.

We're back watching Pickleball on TV. I feel like there hasn't been any good movies or TV shows that I've been in love with lately. Any suggestions? I'm always open to suggestions. Just a reminder, I've seen a lot of TV shows, but I feel like I've been on Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and looking around. I can't find anything new. We did talk about starting Desperate Housewives all like city from the beginning because we've never

watched any of them, but we heard that the finale was just like to die for. So that was more of a patent thing. But you said you would watch with me. I said I'd consider it. Yes. I will highly consider it. Because I can't find anything else right now. So if no one gives me anything good, I'm going to be watching Desperate housewives with my wife, which I would love to do because I love her. But if someone gives me something good, I might be watching something else. That's what I got for my 10 seconds. Let's hop into today's episode. Okay, our sources for this episode are from a whisper to a rallying cry by Pauli U, the

New Yorker Asia Society dotorg CNN, Zinn Education Project, all its interesting.com, history.com, NPR, New York Times, Heffington Post, NBC News, and PBS. So every once in a while, a case comes along that completely upends history, and yet somehow never makes it into most history books. Now, I'm not talking about a case that gets a new law passed or an amendment to the already existing judicial process, which in and of itself is a huge achievement as we know. No.

Some cases are so big, they're so powerful. They spark an entire civil rights movement, just like the one I'm going to tell you about today. It's a case that's been buried pretty deep in our nation's backstory. And I think we owe it to the victim, Vincent Chinn, and his family, as well as the entire Asian-American population to talk about it, to keep passing it on. Because to not know about the murder of Vincent Chinn is to have skipped an entire chapter in American civil Rights history,

and I promise it's as frustrating and as moving as I'm hyping it up to be. So let's start at the beginning, even before Vincent Chin was born. With another crucial character in our story, Vincent's mother named Lily Chin. Lily grew up in China in one of the nation's largest cities known today as Guangzhou. During World War II, she and her family retreated to the mountains outside the city as the new Communist leader Mao Zedong fought to establish the People's Republic of China. And that's when Lily started dreaming of what life would be like in a democracy, particularly in America.

After the war was over, Lily wrote letters to a young Chinese American soldier in the States, a man named David Chin. In 1945, he came back to China to meet Lily face to face, and the connection they'd been building was solidified. The two were undoubtedly in love. They got married married in 1946 and after David brought Lily back to America with him to begin their lives together. So this dream she's been having kind of starts to become true. They found themselves in a modest apartment in Detroit, Michigan, particularly in the neighborhood of Highland Park, which at the time was a gentrifying middle-class area. By the 1950s, the couple was looking to expand their family and actually decided to adopt. Pouring over images of young children at a foster

home back in China, there was one little boy that caught Lily's eye. A four-year-old named Gen, he was the only one smiling back at the camera. And Lily felt an immediate connection to Jen. In that smile, she saw her destiny. She was to become his mother. And she did everything in her power to make sure that came to fruition. After a long and exhausting process, David and Lily finally had all the paperwork to bring Jen over to America. They even gave him a more American sounding name, hoping to help him fit in a bit more as a minority in their community they were living in. From then on, the six-year-old Jen became known as Vincent. While Lily herself had a hard time assimilating with the predominantly white community, Vincent seemed to adjust quickly.

In Detroit at the time, Asians made up less than 1% of the city's population, only about 7,600 in a sea of 1.2 million. Still, Vincent found plenty of new friends while always maintaining a cheery and optimistic outlook. He always wore a little tie to school to make sure he looked his best. Lily said, even as Vincent got older, he was always a wonderful, well-behaved kid. Her only complaint? Vincent was too much of a ladies' man.

Oh, Vincent! He was the life of the party and would charm the pants off nearly every girl he met. Oh, you ladies' man. A romantic at heart, Vincent loved to write poetry and dreamed of doing it professionally one day. But Lily encouraged him to choose another path. Being a writer was too risky, she said. And one day, he'd want a steady job

to be able to provide for his own family. Always heating the advice of his mother, Vincent put his writing dreams on the back burner and instead went to the Lawrence Institute of Technology to get his engineering degree. But he never really shook that romantic side. In 1978, the now 23-year-old Vincent met the woman he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He first laid eyes on the 20-year-old Vicki at a dance and right away the two were smitten with one another.

He began writing poetry again, calling Vicki his muse, winning her over with his words. And about a year later, he asked Vicki if she would marry him. They took their time setting the date and finally landed on June 28th, 1982. While it was still a little over two years away, the couple worked hard to save money for their wedding and a house. Vincent worked at an engineering company as a computer tech operator during the week, and on the weekends he took an additional job of waiting tables at the Golden Star restaurant. Unfortunately though, 1981 was tough on the Chin family. Vincent's father, David, died from kidney disease. Oh wow. Less than a year before his...

His father as in his adoptive father. Yes. This was less than a year before his son was meant to walk down the aisle. Yeah. There's only inspired Vincent to work harder to make sure he was leaving something behind for the ones he loved. He and Vicki decided right after their honeymoon in Aruba, they would begin trying for their own family. Even have his mother Lilly move in with them to help care for their little additions. And as June 1982

inched closer, Vincent got only more excited about the future he was building for himself. Unfortunately, it would all come crashing down only 9 days before he tied the knot. It was on the night of June 19th. It was a Saturday afternoon, and a much slower day at the restaurant than Vincent was used to. He was cut early that night and decided, maybe this would be the perfect evening for a little impromptu bachelor party. Vincent didn't have anything planned, but the opportunity had presented itself, so he called some of his closest friends to see

if they were free. It was Robert Serozki, Jimmy Choi, and Gary Koei-Vu, all that agreed to join him. They started the night by passing around a bottle of vodka. The plan was to head over to the fancy pants lounge, but the strip club didn't sell alcohol on the premises. So the guys wanted to make sure they had a good buzz on before they went inside. Vincent and his friends took their seats right in front of the stage. The dancers were happy to perform for Vincent who was eager to hand over a fistful of ones for each dance. The night was going well for everyone inside the fancy pants club,

until two other customers walked through the front doors. The men took their seats across the stage from Vincent. But a short time after, Vincent and his friends heard the white men throw some racial slurs out over the music. Then one of them made a bizarre remark. He said, it's because of you that we're out of work. Now I need to take a pause here to explain this because it probably makes no sense out of context. And yet it's the catalyst for this entire story. So in the 1980s, the American auto industry wasn't doing very well. One of the reasons was because the price of gas was soaring, and American made cars just weren't as gas-efficient. But Japanese cars were a bit better about this. So they were driving stiff competition, cutting into American profits with their massive imports.

And Detroit, well, that was one of the auto industry capitals of the nation, which meant a lot of people in Detroit had been laid off and lost their jobs Thanks to the competition from Japanese car makers. Got it. I see suddenly they're well-paying jobs with really good benefits were gone and I mean people were angry. It was ugly out there like it wasn't unusual to open up the paper and see that someone was shot at while driving on the freeway And a Japanese made car In fact even Ronald Reagan used the issue as political fuel during his 1980 presidential campaign saying quote Japan is part of the problem So I know you're wondering what does all this have to do with Vincent Chen

absolutely nothing and Everything all at the same time. Well, it does why Ronic because he's not even Japanese No, he's Chinese so I mean, that's completely different that's like saying some from America and someone from Ireland Yeah, rather to completely different countries and he doesn't nor has he ever worked for a car manufacturing company. Like he's an engineer. Yeah. Yet the men sitting across from him at the fancy pants lounge have. It was 43 year old Ronald Evans who was an employee at Chrysler and his 22 year old step son Michael Knitz. They had recently been let go as employees at Chrysler. And they're fired up, seemingly ready to take their aggression out on any Asian person who looks at them the wrong way. In fact, the strip club wasn't even part of the duo's original plans for that night.

Michael had gotten into a fight with his girlfriend earlier that day, so his step-dad Ron thought he would take him out for the night to the strip club to cheer him up. They grabbed a few beers at the neighborhood bar and then figured why not catch the end of the Detroit Tigers game. But on the way over, they heard on the radio. They were already down by seven points. So the two men cited not to bother.

Instead, they pulled over at the fancy pants strip club looking for something else to do. Is it called the fancy pants? Or are you saying like it's a fancy place? No, it's called the fancy pants strip club. It's else to do. Is it called the fancy pants? Or are you saying like it's a fancy place? No, it's called the fancy pants strip club. It's called the fancy. OK, got it. And let's just say that whatever they were looking for at this lounge, they found it.

So here we have two groups of men who found their way to this club by pure chance that evening, yet what followed would change the course of history. Because after Ron yelled across the stage at Vincent, it's because of you we're out of work. Vincent got out of his chair and approached the two guys. Then Vincent shoved Ron in the chest. Suddenly chairs were being tossed and one of the dancers spotted Ron throwing a punch in Vincent's direction. The whole thing lasted about a minute or two before the security guards broke up the fight and began escorting Vincent out of the club.

But in the heat of the moment, Vincent yelled back over his shoulder at Ron and Michael that he'd be waiting for them outside. And unfortunately, the two men took him up on that promise. Outside the five foot 10, 150 pound Vincent began taunting the six foot one, 190 pound Ron. Ron, who looked back at his steps on Michael, saw that his head was bleeding badly from the scuffle that had happened inside. And that's when he just snapped. Ron grabbed a baseball bat from his trunk

and began walking swiftly toward Vincent, which was when Vincent turned and ran. I mean, this is no longer just a fist fight. This is turned into there's some weapons. Ron unable to keep up with the younger Vincent told Michael to hop in the car. Then they went cruising around the neighborhood looking for Vincent. What about his friends? They're just in the club?

No, his friends are with him. Oh, so they're all running. Yes. OK. About 20 minutes later, they found Vincent outside of McDonald's laughing with his friend Jimmy Choi, which of course only angered them more. Like they're taking this seriously.

They're in their car on the lookout, and he's just still goofing off with his friends. Ron and Michael could have driven home that night at this point. They could have called it quits, taken Michael to the hospital for stitches maybe instead they chose to pull into the McDonald's parking lot and pick up exactly where they had left off. Michael snuck up on Vincent, taking him in a bear hug from behind while Ron got out of the car with his baseball bat. Oh my gosh. I did not want to know the rest. Vincent managed to squirm out of Michael's grip and ran into the street, tripping into oncoming traffic. But when he looked up, he saw Ron standing

over him. And that's when Ron began swinging. Once in the back, then again in the face, the head, the stomach, blood was pouring out of Vincent's body, and Ron was not stopping. Nor did he care that a group of people were watching an absolute horror from just a few feet away. A group who said Ron appeared to be swinging for a home run because he was badgering Vincent so hard with this bat. The only saving grace were the two police officers who'd been eating inside the McDonald's as they saw the crowd form outside. They rushed after Ron screaming

while they pointed their guns in his direction. And that's when it washed over, Ron, the severity of his actions. He slowly put the bat down on the ground as he raised his hands in the air. But it was too late, the damage had already been done. Jimmy ran over to his friend who was now choking up blood. As Vincent whispered to some of his last words,

fight, fight, it's not fair. Jimmy raced to a pay phone to call an ambulance when the EMTs arrived. One of them claimed that in their 11 years of work they had never seen someone so badly begin as Vincent Chin had been. By that point, Vincent was already in fatal condition, slipping in and out of consciousness. When he reached the hospital, around 10.21 pm, most of his brain activity had stopped. He was given a 5% chance of survival.

Meanwhile, Rob Evans and Michael Knits were placed in handcuffs and taken down to the county jail. At around 1 a.m., Vincent went into a five-hour emergency surgery to try and relieve the blood clots that were blocking blood flow to the rest of his brain. The swelling was so severe that doctors had to remove a portion of Vincent's brain to increase any chance of survival. However, when they finished around 6 a on June 20th, Vincent's condition still hadn't improved. His mother Lily came to see him shortly after. At that point, Vincent was in a coma and on life support. The first thing she thought about was how his new haircut,

the one he'd just gotten in preparation for his wedding, was now ruined by these surgical scars. Meanwhile, Ron Evans and Michael Knits were at the police station getting charged with second-degree murder. And because they had no criminal record, they were actually released without bond for this time being. What's that? That's not a freak. Which is absolutely...

How does that even happen? Well, it's also shocking to Officer Cotton, one of the cops who stopped the fight, because he's like, I've seen people go to jail for having marijuana on them and these guys beat someone from an inch of his life and they get to sleep in their own beds tonight. Like they were just in and out. That's annoying. Nothing about that situation is fair.

Yeah. Particularly because Vincent Chan is now lying in a hospital bed with his mother and soon-to-be wife crying beside him. And that's where they stay for the next four days until Lily decides it's time. Vincent's not going to improve. His brain had ceased to function.

So on June 23, 1982, Lily took her son off life support. Which is a decision no parent should ever have to make. Her husband dies, then her son dies. That's really hard. And on June 28th, guess who should have been dressing for Vincent and Vicki's wedding that day? We're instead getting ready for Vincent's funeral. Yeah. For eight whole months after the fact, Michael and Ron went about their lives as they waited for their day in court. On February 9th, 1983 rolled around. They both pleaded no contests

to the manslaughter charges, with hopes that the judge would go easy on their sentence. And it worked. Maybe a little too well, because not only did they not have to face a trial now, the judge ruled overwhelmingly in their favor. And this is going to absolutely disgust you, but here's what Judge Kaufman gave them. Three years probation in a $3,000 fine. For what happened?

Wait, for killing somebody? For beating Vincent Chin to death. Oh, his manslaughter, correct? Yes, manslaughter. And he gets three years. How's that even possible? And you know what Judge Kaufman said after he delivered this sentencing, these weren't the kind of men you sent to jail.

We're talking here about a man who's held down a responsible job for 17 to 18 years and his son is employed and a part-time student. You don't make the punishment fit the crime. You make the punishment fit the criminal. Holy crap. Which if this were actually how the judicial system worked, half of the killers we talk about on this show would be walking for you right now because they too didn't have a criminal record before. Even Ronald Evans admitted he was baffled by the leniency of his sentencing. He had already mentally prepared himself to go to jail for killing Vincent.

But there were a lot of discrepancies with how the case and the trial were handled from the very beginning. For example, please never seem to interview key witnesses, including the dancers at the fancy pants club who heard Ron Evans originally making racial slurs, which suggested Vincent's race played a large part in his slang. Also back then, it wasn't unheard of for the prosecutor's office to miss sentencing hearings, which in this case meant there was no one representing the Chen family that day in court. No one was there to state the victim's case. Just the judge, the two accused, and their lawyers. Lily Chen wasn't even told about the hearing. Basically, Kaufman heard one side of the story and closed the book.

But Lily Chen was not going to let things end there. She knew her son was worth more than a $3,000 fine in some community service hours. So she picked up a pen and she began riding to the Detroit Chinese welfare council, begging for help with any appeals and further legal council. By March 20, 1983, just four days after the sentencing, Lily's call was answered. That day, a group of about 30 Asian Americans came together in the back room of the Golden Star restaurant where Vincent Chen had formally worked. Among them were Michigan's top lawyers, activists, and reporters, all putting their heads together on one important subject. They wanted to get justice for Vincent.

Yeah. The biggest challenge was finding a way around the double jeopardy law. Evans and Nitz had already been found guilty of manslaughter, so the criminal case was over. They were not going to be able to prosecute on that issue again. Yeah, they have to do, I don't know, the correct legal term, some sort of racism charge. Yeah. I think it's called a civil rights violation. So this is the angle they try. Together, the group formed a civil rights organization called the American Citizens for Justice or the ACJ. And from there, they began protesting the sentencing as well as

petitioning the Department of Justice to re-investigate the case as a civil rights violation, suggesting the crime had been racially motivated. Before the trial, Vincent's death had received little press outside of Detroit, but once people heard about the ACJ's fight and the ridiculously lenient sentencing dished out to Vincent's assailants, the new spread like wildfire. By the summer of 1983, Vincent's story grew beyond national headlines to a full-on civil rights movement driven by the ACJ. Suddenly, every Asian-American community was rallying together to fight for justice, flooding the streets with signs and rallying cries. It was no longer just the Chinese fighting against the Chinese Exclusion Act or the Japanese fighting against residual discrimination from World War II. Now, for the first time in history, all Asian Americans from Vietnam to the Philippines to India

were transcending those boundaries coming together to collectively address racial intolerance. What sucks, I mean, this whole thing sucks, but one of the erotic things is that he's mad at the Japanese yet he killed a Chinese person. And he honestly just doesn't even like he's was so ignorant to even realize there's probably even a difference. Right. Like, I don't know, annoying. So acting as the de facto face of the movement was Lily Chin, who began traveling the country, attending rallies to speak about her son's case. Suddenly, every major television network was covering the protests around the country from New York to San Francisco. Keep in mind, this was in the 80s. So the campaign for Vincent Chin even attracted celebrities in the civil

rights movement like Black activists, Jesse Jackson, who said, quote, these attacks on Asian Americans are no different than the atrocities of the Ku Klux Klan against blacks in the south. At that time, everyone in America, regardless of their race, knew the name Vincent Chen. And while Ron Evans and Michael Knitz may have dodged several legal recourse for their actions, the public was dishing out their own set of consequences for their actions. Just 12 days after Ron was handed that mild sentence, he was fired by his longtime employer, Chrysler. Now with a felony charge on his record, he couldn't find decent work anywhere else. Leaving the house in general was out of the question since Ron faced public scrutiny pretty much

anywhere he went. So he mostly stayed inside his home with the curtains closed, watching TV while his wife went to work. Even his 11-year-old daughter had to change her newspaper route because people were asking her if she was, quote, that killer's daughter. And that suck doesn't that affects her life and she didn't do anything wrong. Right. They went to wife. I mean, that's a whole other story. So over time, Ron began to suffer from severe depression as did his step-son Michael Knitz, who also became withdrawn and stopped hanging out with friends. Michael became increasingly anxious and paranoid,

mainly from the non-stop phone calls and threats coming to his house at all hours of the night. So while they weren't behind bars, Michael and Ron were in a way experiencing their own form of mental prison. Even Judge Kaufman, who handed them their sentences, was not prepared for the wrath that followed. His office was overwhelmed with hateful letters and phone calls questioning his ability to do his job. He claimed that in all his years of work, he'd never experienced as much backlash as he had with the Vincent chin.

Oh bro, look what you did. Still, even with time Kaufman stood by his decision saying if he had to do it all again, he would look what you did. The still even with time, Kaufman stood by his decision saying, if he had to do it all again, he would make the same call. Yeah. Oh, wait, what? Yeah. He said he wouldn't change the thing,

so he doubled down basically on. Double down. Okay. But luckily, the decision was no longer in Kaufman's hands, because by June of 1983, a year after Vincent's death, the ACJ had their first big win. The Department of Justice had agreed to investigate Vincent's case.

Come November, a federal grand jury indicted Ron Evans and Michael Knitz on charges that they had violated Vincent's civil rights. More specifically for interfering with his ability to enjoy a public space on account of his race. Now this was huge because this was the first federal civil rights trial in the US involving in Asian-American. So the following year on June 13th 1984, Michael Knitz and Ron Evans were backing court, but the question was no longer did they murder Vincent Chin. That had already been answered. Now the jury was there to decide was this crime racially motivated, or was this just the result of some drunken bar fight?

Well, this time witnesses were called to testify, including some of the dancers who'd heard Ron make racial slurs in Vincent's direction prior to the fight breaking out, along with the one phrase that really set them off, the, it's because of you that were out of work. A line that felt to most people like a racially charged accusation. I'm curious to where this goes as well, just because Vincent pushed him first, correct? At least that's what the witness is saying. Yeah, the witness is saying Vincent got up and took the fight. Doesn't make what happened in the end of the cave, but I'm just curious because that will

affect things. These stories have multiple layers, right? And this racially charged accusation, it's because of you, we're out of work, is one that seemed to wrongfully imply there was no difference between a Chinese and a Japanese man. But there was another witness that proved to be crucial to this argument, a man named Jimmy Perry, who was 19 at the time of the crime, Jimmy had been simply walking down the street that night when Ronald and Michael pulled over to ask him a question. According to Jimmy, the men rolled down their windows and asked Jimmy if they'd seen two Chinese guys

in the area. This was after Vincent had fled the parking lot and retreated to that McDonald's and they were on the lookout for him. Jimmy was skeptical to say anything at first. He sensed trouble. He could smell the alcohol on their breath even from outside of the car. Plus Michael was bleeding from his head. So Jimmy asked if they just wanted to go to the hospital but Michael was insistent. He had a Jimmy a $20 bill and asked him again. Would he be willing to help them find and catch the Chinese guys? Jimmy, not knowing what he was in for, hopped in the backseat and went along with them, eventually ending up at that McDonald's. It was the constant mention of Vincent's race by Ebbins and Knits,

by several witnesses throughout the trial that really got the jury thinking. I mean, they basically said before killing him that night. They brought up his race multiple times and multiple people heard it So after 12 hours of deliberation they came back with a verdict on June 28th 1984 on the two-year anniversary of what should have been Vincent's wedding They found Michael Knitz not guilty, but Ron Evans guilty of violating Vincent Chin's civil rights Evans was sentenced to 25 years in prison for this. Got it. Okay. Only Ron didn't go to prison right away.

Instead, he got to stay home with his team while they appealed his case, claiming a legal error had affected the outcome. I was going to say I'm sure this is just's gonna be a lot more legal crap going on. Uh-huh. Another two whole years passed after he was given the 25 year sentence when the court of appeals finally agreed to overturn his conviction.

So he still hasn't spent a day in prison. Oh, and they overturned it. Yes. But that didn't rule out the possibility of another trial. On September 19th, 1986, the Department of Justice announced once again, Ronald Evans would have another day in court, which meant Lily Chen was going to have to relive this whole ordeal over again. She'd have to sit before a judge and listen to the horrific

details of how her son had died another time, and there was still no guarantee that he would get the justice he deserved. Unfortunately, that was all out of her hands, and in April of 1987, a new trial began. They even granted Evans' request to move the hearing to Cincinnati, where less people knew the case and would hold less bias against him. Which, I'm not surprised they did that. But the question remained the same. Was this a drunken fight that had gotten out of control, or was this a case of racial violence?

Well, this time the jury which was made up of mostly blue-collar white men like Ronald Emmons Decided he was not guilty of violating Vincent Chen's silver rights. Oh, and that was that It was a pretty devastating ending to Vincent Chen's story when Lily stood before the press She could barely muster up the strength to say, quote, my life is over, Vincent's soul will never rest. Lily later went on to file a civil lawsuit against Evans and Nits for the wrongful death of Vincent. She was awarded $65,000 from Nits and 1.5 million from Evans, who would hand over a portion of his monthly earnings as long as he was employed, except he wasn't employed. He actually never worked full time again, which meant he never paid a single penny of that

1.5 million to the chin estate. But truthfully, no amount of money would have healed the pain Lily felt. Feeling so let down by the justice system, Lily decided to move back to China where she lived until she passed away in 2002. Oh, that's it. Meanwhile, Ron and Michael's actions continued to haunt them over the decades. Every year on June 19th, the crowd of protesters stand in front of Ronald's house with signs devoted to the memory of Vincent Chen. I mean, at least, yeah, I don't know. And well, it also shouldn't be the public's job to deliver justice. No, it's not.

Like there's a justice system for this reason. Yeah. And now, well into his 80s, he still receives threatening phone calls from strangers at all hours of the day. And while Vincent's attackers may have never gotten the justice they deserved, his case was seen as a turning point when it came to Asian American civil rights. Not only did he inspire the foundation for several activist groups, his legacy led to the passage of several laws against hate crimes in the United States Legislature.

On top of that, his case exposed a lot of the problems with manslaughter sentencing in the state of Michigan. We've talked about this before, um, just some of the sentencing's don't make any sense. Because it's like, I could maybe see them saying manslaughter at the bar, you know, but the fact that they drove around looking for him, found him, it's not premeditated murder.

That feels like it to me. And he went and grabbed a baseball bat. It's no different than grabbing a weapon. Like I don't understand how that's not premeditated. Well, that's why there were changes made after his case, because what is manslaughter? Yeah. And in part, help change the guidelines

around the mandatory minimum sentencing so that no one is ever walking away with a sentence as lenient as Evans and it's gone. Is it five years to minimum now? I'm not sure exactly what. I didn't look it up. I'm not sure either. OK. But Vincent's case also ensured that victims would always be represented during sentencing

hearings to avoid only one side of the story I ever being told. So from now on, both sides had to be present. More than anything, Vincent's case showcased the power of the Pan Asian community in the US for the very first time. But even some of our nation's most critical cases get lost in the archives of history, and Vincent Chins was certainly one of them. I just think it was important that we as a nation be reminded of Vincent Chins case, because when stories is powerful and transformative as this are forgotten, that's when history is just doomed

to repeat itself. And I'm so grateful for all of the changes that were made. But again, it's always so unfortunate and unfair and unjust that a case like this has to happen in order for progress to be made. It's sad that the dad died and he died. And the mom moved back to China and she died. Like the whole family's just gone. Yeah.

Like that whole generation basically. And how devastating that his wedding day ended up being his funeral. Yeah. And it also is heartbreaking that something that had nothing to do with him, like this literally had nothing to do with him. It's like what are the chances they're in the same bar,

like come out, like that sucks. And then he's literally murdered for it for hate Yeah, or hate that is the story of instant chin and we will see you guys next week with our 200th episode And I have picked a certain case that I heard once and kind of stuck with me through the years and I've yet to cover it so I am excited to cover it for our 200th episode and we will see you next week. I love it. I hate it. Goodbye. you