Illustration, court, logo, court logo / Photo by Kim Hyun-jung
The Supreme Court has ruled that if court documents are not properly delivered and a trial proceeds with a defendant absent, ultimately leading to a guilty verdict, a retrial must be conducted unless the defendant deliberately avoided the trial.
The 2nd division of the Supreme Court, led by Justice Park Young-jae, announced on the 4th that it has overturned the original verdict and sent the case back to the Incheon District Court. A person identified as A was initially sentenced to one year in prison for charges including fraud, forgery of private documents, exercising forged documents, and attempted fraud.
In 2021, A was charged for colluding to act as a cash collector for a voice phishing ring, collecting several tens of millions of won from victims.
However, problems arose during the trial process when court documents such as an indictment copy and summons were not properly delivered to A. Consequently, the first court resorted to public notification to deliver these documents. This method considers documents delivered when they are posted on the court’s website for a certain period when a party’s whereabouts are unknown.
The first court proceeded with the trial without A present and sentenced A to one year in prison, reasoning that “severe punishment is necessary even for subordinate members, as recovering the victims’ losses is difficult.”
The prosecution appealed, deeming A’s sentence too lenient. The appellate court also used public notification to serve documents and conducted the trial with A absent, subsequently dismissing the appeal.
Upon learning about the verdict later, A applied for a restoration of the right to appeal on October 8 of last year. The court acknowledged that A’s failure to appeal within the required period was due to reasons beyond A’s control and approved the request for appeal restoration on the 28th of the same month.
The Supreme Court concluded that since A’s absence during the first and second trials was beyond their control, there was a basis for a retrial by analogy to the retrial provisions in this case.