DNA test shows rapist guilty

Kim Smith

Wednesday, April 17, 2002 | 9:54 a.m.

A convicted rapist serving multiple life terms has been proved guilty through DNA tests that he demanded be done 11 years after he was convicted.

Albert Lee, 37, was sentenced to four consecutive life terms, plus an additional eight years in prison, in connection with a December 1989 attack on a 33-year-old woman.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said officials from Project Innocence notified him recently that DNA extracted from crime scene evidence appears to match that taken from Lee.

"Obviously the test confirms what we've believed all along -- that Mr. Lee perpetrated this crime," Herndon said.

Lee's attorney, Mace Yampolsky, could not be reached for comment this morning.

According to court documents, the woman told police that Lee knocked on her door and pushed his way in. A few moments later, she said, he choked her into unconsciousness using his arm.

When she awoke, the woman said she had a plastic grocery sack over her head and she realized she had been sexually assaulted. A few seconds later someone began sawing at her neck and wrists with a knife.

She feigned her death, and when the intruder left, she managed to lock her door and crawl upstairs to call 911.

Jurors convicted Lee after hearing the testimony of the victim and a handful of neighbors who said they saw Lee in the apartment complex around the time of the attack.

The jurors had also learned that Lee could not be excluded as a suspect through blood tests, and he had told a friend about impulsively slashing a woman's throat during a fight.

Lee asked for DNA testing in a federal lawsuit filed in October 2000 by Yampolsky and the Innocence Project, which was founded by former O.J. Simpson attorney Barry Scheck.

He won the right to have the DNA tested in July 2001.

Herndon said he opposed the test as a waste of time because he was confident the test would show Lee was guilty.

Now Herndon said he is glad the test was completed because it "bolsters the integrity of the criminal justice system."

Many times, Herndon said, the media focuses only on those cases in which people are exonerated.

"The public doesn't see the times when the tests come back and it shows 'Yup, we got the right person,' which is what happens most of the time," Herndon said.