UC Davis Researcher Found Not Guilty in Trade Secrets Case

In what was originally presented by prosecutors as a high-profile trade secrets case, a jury Monday found a Chinese American researcher at UC Davis innocent of charges that he embezzled laboratory materials with the intent of starting up a business overseas.

The acquittal, which was celebrated by supporters in the California Asian American community, ended a three-month ordeal for researcher Bin Han, a 13-year employee at the Davis campus. Han’s troubles began in May when his research contract was terminated by supervisors at the university ophthalmology labs. On May 17, he was arrested at home by university police and held in jail for 18 days without bail.

“I am very happy,” said Han, who was surrounded by supporters in the Yolo County courthouse after the verdict. “I love this country. Now all I want to do is get back to work.”

Han has an administrative legal action for wrongful termination pending against the university.

In his defense, Han, who is married with two school-age children, insisted that he had no plans to keep the university materials--protein gels used in cornea repairs and transplants--that police found in his home freezer. He said a round-trip plane ticket that police found in his home was to visit his ailing mother in the western Chinese city of Xian.

After his arrest, the case was presented by Yolo County prosecutors as an international scientific espionage plot in which Han was accused of attempting to smuggle proprietary protein gels from the United States to China.

Portrayed as a flight threat, Han was ordered to surrender his American passport.

But the trade secret case soon evaporated after it was shown that the protein gels and the machines used to produce them are readily available in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong as well as other locations.

Last month the remaining two charges against Han were reduced from felonies to a single charge of petty theft by embezzlement.

In the wake of the controversial federal prosecution of Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee, the case against Han rallied support in the California Asian American community.

Ivy Lee, leader of the Sacramento-based Chinese-American Political Action Committee, said she hoped that the Bin Han case would embolden the many Chinese American and Asian American researchers in university labs.

“I do hope it will give them some sense of security,” said Lee, a retired sociology professor at Cal State Sacramento.

“I have seen so many of our people buckling under to the might of the university. Han is a model of courage, the antithesis of the weak and defenseless Chinese person in America. His courage inspires us all.”

The university was steadfast Monday in defending its case against Han.

“Although we are very respectful of the criminal process and the jury’s decision,” said UC Davis counsel Steve Drown, “we still feel the university had a reasonable basis for the issuance of a search warrant. We take these matters very seriously. We feel the university police acted appropriately.”

The verdict by the jury was met with applause and cheering by an audience of Asian American supporters and employee union leaders from the UC campus. The defendant’s wife, Hong Xia, broke down in tears.

As one of the university witnesses in the trial walked by Han’s supporters, the group chanted, “Shame! Shame!”

Part of Han’s defense in the case was that he was being prosecuted because of his attempts to act as a whistle-blower to the federal Food and Drug Administration for what he described as improper or unethical activities in the Davis labs.

The jury, which contained no Asian members, took two hours and 30 minutes to reach its verdict.

“I think ultimately the jurors saw that the case was a shameless attempt by the university to bully and intimidate an individual,” defense attorney Stewart Katz said. “They were hoping to get a criminal conviction or a hung jury to insulate them from facing any accountability for their own actions.”