Chol Soo Lee (August 15, 1952 – December 2, 2014) was a Korean American immigrant who was wrongfully convicted for the 1973 murder of Yip Yee Tak, a San Francisco Chinatown gang leader, and sentenced to life in prison.

Chol Soo served ten years of his sentence for the killing of Yip Yee Tak, of which he was later acquitted, four of those on death row.

The San Francisco public school system and juvenile authorities declared that Lee was mentally disturbed by 1965, diagnosing him as an adolescent schizophrenic and committing him to the McAuley Institute at St. Mary's Medical Center after a suicide attempt while being held at juvenile hall.

He was later admitted to Napa State Hospital in March 1966 for three months, then transferred to a foster home in Hayward after being declared sane.

[2]: 178–180 Shortly afterward, police responded to the scene at approximately 8:10 pm (17 minutes before sunset),[10] and an unrecorded witness pointed out the empty five-shot .38 Special revolver used by the killer had been discarded in Beckett Alley, where it was recovered.

[2]: 238  Ballistic comparison to rounds test fired indicated the .38 Special recovered from Beckett Alley was the murder weapon.

At the time of his arrest, Lee was carrying a Colt Python .357 revolver and had 41 rounds of .38 caliber ammunition in his pocket.

[6]: 16 Hintz accepted the assignment contingent on assistance from the San Francisco Public Defender's Office, which never materialized.

In addition, key evidence was not provided to Lee's defense attorneys during discovery, including alternative theories for the motive, the existence of percipient witnesses, that some witnesses may have seen the killer exit a tan Cadillac several minutes prior to the shooting, and that some police reports and polygraph results supported Lee's innocence.

[6]: 23–24  Falzon's partner, Inspector Jack Cleary, first broached the subject of the "Ski Mask Bandits" during his testimony on June 11, 1974.

[2]: 261  The conviction was won in part on the damning testimony of Falzon, who had been invited by the defense to testify about his "knowledge of a motive as to why Mr. Yip Yee Tak was killed"; in the writ of habeas corpus, the San Joaquin Public Defender's Office later stated the defense "counsel had no purpose in 'opening the door' to the rumors, rank gossip, prior arrests, suggestive affilitations, and other grossly prejudicial and patently inadmissible evidence which poured into the case [during Falzon's testimony].

The continuing investigative series prompted a local drive to form the first Chol Soo Lee Defense Committee, organized as a pan-Asian effort by then law school graduate Jay Yoo and Davis, California, school teacher Grace Kim in Sacramento, third generation Japanese American college student Ranko Yamada, and third-generation Korean Americans Gail Whang and Brenda Paik Sunoo in the San Francisco Bay Area.

[1] The defense committee grew into a grassroots coalition of activists determined to raise awareness, funds, and resources to overturn Lee's sentence.

[14] Lee filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in July 1978, alleging that key evidence had been suppressed at his first trial.

[15][6] Lee was not aware of the remedy of habeas corpus due to his limited education and experience until he was provided an attorney from the San Joaquin County public defender's office on October 18, 1977, following his arraignment for the stabbing of Needham.

In addition, the police report of June 6 included a statement from a confidential informant that asserted that just before Tak was killed, he was seen having coffee with another person before apparently reaching some sort of agreement and then arguing.

On January 14, 1983, California's 3rd District Court of Appeal nullified Chol Soo Lee's death sentence for the Needham stabbing, citing the Stockton trial judge's incorrect jury instructions, and for allowing hearsay testimony in the death penalty phase of the trial.

He also drafted an autobiography entitled Freedom without Justice, which was completed after his death by University of California at Davis professor Richard S.

[26] Free Chol Soo Lee, a documentary,[27][28][29][30] was screened in January 2022 as part of the Sundance Film Festival.

[34] It was selected by The Better Angels Society as the runner-up for the 2021 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film, behind Gradually, Then Suddenly: The Bankruptcy of Detroit.