Former HK man wins long fight against conviction, but now faces expulsion
Former Hong Kong resident David Wong Kin-jin may have won his fight to get a murder conviction overturned in the United States, but he faces the prospect of deportation upon his release.
The Fujian native and illegal immigrant to the US was serving time for armed robbery when he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for a jailhouse stabbing in 1987.
About two months after having the conviction overturned, District Attorney Richard Cantwell of Clinton county, New York, filed a motion last Friday to dismiss the murder charge, to avoid a retrial and put an end to the case. The motion is expected to be approved by Judge Richard Giardino of Fulton county.
Wong, 42, who had moved to Hong Kong from Fujian before travelling to the US in the early 1980s, was sentenced to prison in 1984 for robbing the owner of the Chinese restaurant in Suffolk county, Long Island, where he worked.
In August 1987, he was charged with second-degree murder for allegedly stabbing fellow prison inmate Tyrone Julius while imprisoned in Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York. He was convicted and sentenced to 33 years to life in jail.
In September last year, Wong's attempt to seek a retrial - after his lawyers presented eight inmates who said they had heard another inmate, Nelson Gutierrez, admit killing Julius - was denied.