**”Amended Charges, If Statute of Limitations Expired at Prosecution Time, Should Be Acquitted” Ruling Reconfirmed**
The Supreme Court has ruled that an appellate ruling accepting the prosecution’s request to amend charges to a crime for which the statute of limitations had already expired at the time of the original indictment and sentencing the defendant as guilty should be overturned.
According to legal circles on the 21st, the Supreme Court’s First Division (Presiding Justice Shin Sook-hee) overturned the original judgment, which sentenced A to six years in prison on charges including forgery of private documents, and sent the case back to the Daejeon High Court.
The Supreme Court stated, “The original ruling that recognized guilt without determining whether the statute of limitations had expired misunderstood the legal principles concerning the statute of limitations and failed to conduct the necessary hearings, affecting the judgment.”
Person A, who is not a pharmacist, was indicted last June on charges including managing pharmacies by renting licenses from pharmacists and receiving medical care allowances from the National Health Insurance Corporation in Gyeongnam and Chungnam from 2016 to 2021.
The first instance court recognized the violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Act and fraud charges, sentencing A to two years and six months in prison.
However, the document forgery and usage charges for allegedly forging a rental agreement form in September 2016 were judged not guilty.
The prosecution then applied to amend the indictment at the appeals stage to charges of signature forgery and usage, asserting that they intended to narrow the scope of the examination to achieve a guilty verdict.
While document forgery charges punish the act of creating a document under someone else’s name, signature forgery charges penalize the act of placing a forged signature on an already created document, with a somewhat different focus.
The appellate court approved the amendment to the indictment and recognized guilt for these charges as well, increasing A’s sentence to six years in prison.
A, contesting the “completion of the statute of limitations,” appealed.
A’s side argued that the statute of limitations for the signature forgery and usage charges, changed by the amended indictment, is five years, and since the statute of limitations had expired by the time of the initial indictment last June, recognizing A as guilty was unjust.
The statute of limitations for document forgery is seven years, so there was no issue in indicting for this crime based on a September 2016 act by last June.
However, the argument for appeal was that, since the statute of limitations for signature forgery had expired in September 2021, it could not be judged guilty.
The Supreme Court accepted A’s argument, overturning the original decision and sending it back for re-trial.
The decision was based on the precedent that if the statute of limitations has expired by the time of the indictment based on the amended charges, even if it hasn’t expired based on the original charges, a dismissal sentence must be given.