On Monday, a federal appeals court wrestled with Lee's case - specifically, whether he should be given a new hearing to present evidence about the changed understanding of how fires burn, and whether he should be freed outright.
Defense attorney Peter Goldberger argued that Lee had been convicted only because of the testimony of fire investigators in Monroe County, and that their findings would not hold up today.
"Every credible and competent scientist in the field says that what we thought . . . 20 or 30 years ago was wrong," Goldberger told the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia.
Monroe County Assistant District Attorney Jeremy Bolles acknowledged that fire science is evolving, but said it is still not as "definitive" as DNA.
The Lee case, Bolles said, could not be retried, because so much time has passed and physical evidence taken from the fire scene probably no longer exists.
Lee is not the only Pennsylvania inmate who has challenged an arson conviction because it was based on passé science. Others include Philadelphian Daniel Dougherty, on death row for setting a fire that killed his two young sons; Gregory Brown of Allegheny County, serving life for starting a blaze that killed three firefighters; and James C. Young of Westmoreland County, also serving life for setting the fire that killed his wife, stepson, and infant son.
Doubts about the tenets of arson science surfaced in the 1980s, when investigators began testing fires and watching what happened.
By 1992, the National Fire Protection Association had issued a new guide of professional standards. But almost a decade went by before the standards were endorsed by the U.S. Department of Justice.
