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He investigated the 1974 conviction of Chol Soo Lee, a Korean American immigrant accused of murdering a known gang member in San Francisco’s Chinatown.

Lee pursued the case for six months for the Sacramento Union and wrote two front-page stories in which he described Chol Soo Lee as a troubled young man “betrayed by the well-meaning system which has swallowed up the boy in the name of Americanization.”

Around the same time, Chol Soo Lee was being tried for a second murder in prison, which he claimed was out of self-defense.

Lee would go on to write more than 100 articles about Chol Soo Lee’s case, leaving the Sacramento Union to follow the story through his newspaper start-up, the Koreatown Weekly in Los Angeles.

Julie Ha, who co-directed the Emmy-awarding winning documentary “Free Chol Soo Lee,” said Lee saw parallels between himself and Chol Soo Lee.