Case dropped, passport in hand, Chinese scientist flying back to China. Here’s how it happened.

Late Thursday afternoon, Malcolm Segal and Tom Johnson were in their respective law offices on Capitol Mall in downtown Sacramento preparing for a Friday hearing in federal court for Juan Tang, a Chinese cancer researcher who was due to face trial starting Monday.

Suddenly, they saw a filing from federal prosecutors come online, one that was asking U.S. District Judge John A. Mendez to dismiss the case the government had been pursuing for a year.

“Malcolm and I were both online when the motion came for dismissal, and I came running into his office and we’re both kind of screaming, like, ‘What just happened?’

“And then we went immediately to see her in her (hotel) room.”

Tang had no idea what was coming. She had been in custody for a year, first inside the Sacramento County Main Jail during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, then at a Bay Area lawyer’s home outfitted with a GPS ankle bracelet to ensure she did not leave the house.

A cancer scientist who had come to UC Davis to conduct research, Tang hadn’t seen her 9-year-old daughter, her husband or mother for more than a year, since the FBI arrested her in July 2020 outside the Chinese consulate in San Francisco and arrested her on charges of lying about on her visa application about whether she was a member of China’s military.

Thursday afternoon, she first got word that the U.S. government was dropping her case, and Friday morning the word became official when Mendez signed an order dismissing the lone remaining count against her.

“I think at first she was stunned, not quite understanding how it happened, why it happened,” Johnson said in an interview Friday inside Segal’s office.

“She was, of course, thrilled,” Segal added. “We had to talk to her with a (Mandarin) interpreter on the phone, but we accomplished that and immediately made contact with the court to arrange the removal of her ankle bracelet and to get the return of her passport so that she could return home.”

Before noon Friday, Tang was on her way to catch a flight back to China, stopping long enough outside the federal courthouse in downtown Sacramento to pose for a photo holding her passport up and standing between Johnson and Segal.

The decision to take the photo “was just sort of organic,” Johnson said.

“It just sort of happened,” he said. “We were saying goodbye, essentially.”

Tang’s newfound freedom came as a surprise. She and her lawyers had been scheduled to appear in court Friday for motion hearings before starting a jury trial Monday that was expected to go for five days.

But the decision by prosecutors to drop the charge halted the case in its tracks and without explanation. Acting U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert declined to comment.

Johnson and Segal praised Assistant U.S. Attorney Heiko Coppola from Talbert’s office and trial attorney David Lim from the Justice Department’s national security division, but said they don’t know the reason for them backing away from the case.

“Mr. Coppola and Mr. Lim were great litigators, dignified for the Department of Justice, and at some point they decided to just unplug the case and we don’t know why,” Johnson said. “We’ll never know why.

“We’ll never ask.”

Tang’s case is one of dozens being prosecuted nationwide by federal officials who have targeted Chinese scientists who have gained access to some of the nation’s most prestigious universities and laboratories.

The cases — and Tang’s, in particular — have generated tensions between China and the U.S. government, with protests outside the federal building downtown and threats aimed at the Bay Area lawyer who offered to put up $750,000 interest in his home to house Tang so that she could win release from the jail.

That lawyer, who emigrated from China and later became a citizen, said he had never met Tang before but wanted to help to show her the strength of the American legal system, and he did so despite warnings from a judge that he could lose his home if Tang fled the country while under his watch.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met a better human being than the custodian in this case,” Segal said. “He just stood by her, and he did it without knowing her.”

Tang was accused of lying on her visa application about whether she had ever been a member of the Chinese military of Communist Party. She also was later charged with lying to the FBI agents who questioned her in June 2020 at the Davis apartment she was sharing with her daughter and her mother, a count that Mendez dismissed in May because they had not read Tang her legal rights before questioning her.

Prosecutors produced two photos of Tang in military-style uniforms, and said there was evidence she was affiliated with the military.

Her defense lawyers argued in court papers that China uses civilian scientists at military facilities who frequently wear such uniforms. But they said they never asked Tang whether she was, in fact, a member of China’s army.

“That is not a question a lawyer asks,” Segal said. “And, frankly, it’s not a question a lawyer cares about.

“What we care about is defending the charges the best way we know how and aggressively as we can.”

Segal and Johnson as two of Sacramento’s most prominent and experienced defense lawyers, but Segal said their legal fees were not being paid for by the Chinese government.

“Absolutely not,” Segal said, adding that he and Johnson would not discuss who paid them for what Johnson said were “literally thousands of hours” of work.

“We’ve been compensated for our work, but under the circumstances whatever the compensation was we loved every moment of it, one of the greatest challenges of our professional careers,” Segal said.

The lawyers said their client was not bitter over her experience with the American legal system.

“Not at all,” Segal said. “She is a very sweet person, she’s very charming and has always been, from the first day of the case, grateful for the fact that our system of justice allows our lawyers to act so aggressively on behalf of a client, and that we always had our day in court and that our voices were heard.

“That’s something that doesn’t happen in other places in this world, so she was thrilled…She just wanted to go home.”

Segal said the outcome had him waking up Friday morning on top of the world.

“I woke up this morning feeling like Giannis Antetokounmpo,” Segal said, referring to the Milwaukee Bucks star who helped pulverize the Phoenix Suns in the NBA Finals.

“And then my wife told me to take out the garbage.”

This story was originally published July 23, 2021 at 2:41 PM.