1. Case Overview
A. The Party Represented by 바카라가이드
We represented a defendant who indicted for violating the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Economic Crimes (fraud) under accusation of defrauding the victim of approximately KRW2.4 billion.
B. Case Progress
In the first trial, the court rendered a verdict of acquittal based on a unanimous jury verdict of innocence, aligning with the judges' judgment. However, the appellate court admitted new witnesses and reversed the initial acquittal, sentencing the defendant to two years and six months of imprisonment. The defendant appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.
2. Supreme Court Decision
Supreme Court Decision 2020Do7802, dated July 25, 2024, Case No. 2020Do7802.
3. Our Role
As the Supreme Court primarily reviews legal issues rather than facts, 바카라가이드 emphasized the precedent that "appellate courts must adopt stricter criteria to overturn the credibility of witness testimony deemed reliable by the first court" and "when a unanimous jury verdict of innocence is accepted by the trial court, it can only be overturned on appeal if new evidence clearly contradicts the prior findings." We argued that the appellate court's actions violated procedural rules governing evidence examination.
Despite the first trial's full acquittal, its reasoning spanned only four lines, stating that "there is insufficient evidence to support the indictment, and no reasonable doubt has been eliminated." We closely reviewed case records to reconstruct the case from the client's perspective, pointing out factual errors in the appellate court's judgment.
Specifically, the appellate court's decision heavily relied on new testimony, particularly from the victim's spouse. We focused on arguing that this evidence, under established Supreme Court precedents, was improperly and illegally admitted.
4. The Supreme Court Accepted Our Arguments, Reversing the Appellate Court's Decision and Remanding the Case to the Seoul High Court
The Supreme Court accepted our arguments, reversing the appellate court's decision and remanding the case to the Seoul High Court on the basis of the following rationale:
The Criminal Procedure Act establishes the pretrial hearing system to fully and perfectly realize the spirit of substantial direct trial, thereby emphasizing the necessity of focusing trials in the original court. In particular, for cases involving citizen participation trials, the pretrial hearing system must be mandatorily followed, demanding this focus even more strongly. Furthermore, the provision in the Criminal Procedure Rules regarding witness examination in appellate courts should not be interpreted as a broadly permissive provision but rather as an exceptional and narrowly defined provision.
Considering the above legal principles comprehensively, in cases where a jury in a citizen participation trial has reached a unanimous not-guilty verdict, and the trial court adopts this as its judgment in line with its convictions, additional or new evidence examinations in appellate courts should be limited to cases where the necessity is clearly recognized as exceptional circumstances.
If an appellate court adopts and conducts evidence examinations without sufficient consideration of the above points—such as relying on circumstances already considered by the original court, repetitive or similar testimonies, or focusing heavily on incidental or marginal circumstances that are unlikely to determine guilt or innocence—it risks easily overturning the original court's judgment. This undermines the significance of the jury's unanimous verdict and leads to results that go against these legal principles, which must be avoided.
In this case, the witness examinations conducted during the appellate trial cannot be seen as falling under exceptions, such as cases where the original court's evidence determination violated the 바카라가이드, there was a justifiable reason preventing examination in the original court, or new significant evidence was discovered. Moreover, upon review of their content, the examined evidence appears to be either partially overlapping with already considered circumstances or involving incidental or marginal matters that are unlikely to significantly affect the determination of guilt or innocence. Furthermore, much of it had already been introduced during the original trial's evidence examination process, and it does not constitute new, significant evidence capable of overturning the original decision.
5. Significance of the Supreme Court's Decision
This case involved a unanimous not-guilty verdict rendered by a jury in the first trial conducted under the citizen participation trial system. However, during the appellate trial, additional witness examinations were conducted for the accuser, including the accuser's spouse and a witness initially requested by the prosecutor in the first trial but later withdrawn. Based on these testimonies, the appellate court overturned the first trial's not-guilty verdict and sentenced the defendant to imprisonment.
This criminal case could be viewed as a factual issue regarding whether the defendant deceived the accuser without any intention or ability to repay from the beginning. However, we argued that the appellate court violated the legal principles that must be observed when evaluating evidence. The Supreme Court, a court of 바카라가이드, accepted this argument and recognized that the appellate court's evidence examination exceeded its legal limits. Furthermore, the Supreme Court also confirmed that the content of the evidence examination in the appellate court was insufficient to overturn the first trial's decision.
This ruling is significant as it establishes the requirements for conducting new evidence examinations in appellate trials when the jury has unanimously reached a not-guilty verdict in the first trial. It also introduces a standard that restricts the previously unregulated practice of examining new witnesses in appellate trials, setting a precedent for limiting such practices in the future.
- Attorneys involved: Park Il-Hoan, Lee Jung-ho and Kim Jun-ho
