[Seocho-dong Legal Story] Cared for 10 Years... Tragedy Arising from 'Dawn Prayer' Demand

[Asia Economy Reporter Baek Kyunghwan] The wife endured both economic and mental hardships while caring for her husband, who had been unable to move for 10 years due to a traffic accident, by managing his excretion needs. But that day was different. The wife could no longer tolerate her husband, who had insisted on early morning prayers for three hours starting at 5 a.m. every day.

The prosecution suspected that the wife strangled her husband to death during an argument over the early morning prayers. Although the wife admitted to slapping her husband’s cheek and neck the night before the incident to express pain and frustration, she denied strangling him or covering his nose and mouth, a claim the prosecution did not believe.

The atmosphere was different at the first trial. The first trial court found insufficient evidence that the wife had killed her husband. Above all, it focused on the fact that the medical examiner who performed the autopsy on the husband noted the possibility of asphyxiation caused by hand strangulation or airway obstruction but ultimately declared the cause of death as "undetermined."

The court stated, "Considering that it is difficult to conclude that the injuries to the victim’s neck occurred at the time of death, and that the defendant immediately reported to 119 without attempting to conceal the death or the scene, it is hard to say beyond a reasonable doubt that the wife intentionally strangled the victim to death," and acquitted the wife.

The verdict was overturned in the second trial. The court ruled that the wife had killed her husband based on ▲ multiple wounds, fractures, and submucosal hemorrhages indicating external force sufficient to cause asphyxiation by airway obstruction ▲ no visitors to the house where the defendant and victim lived on the day of death, ruling out the possibility of a third party’s involvement ▲ and the victim’s difficulty in moving alone making self-harm or suicide unlikely.

However, the second trial court sentenced the wife to a relatively light prison term of 2 years and 6 months, taking into account her continuous care for her husband for over 10 years. In fact, after the husband was diagnosed with a level 2 brain lesion disability following the traffic accident in 2007 and became unable to move independently, the wife cared for him alone for 10 years. With hospital bills reaching 7 million won annually, she reportedly quit her job starting in 2017.

The Supreme Court also confirmed a sentence somewhat below the recommended range according to sentencing guidelines. While emphasizing that "human life is precious and the source of dignified human existence that cannot be exchanged for anything in this world," and that a severe sentence was inevitable for the defendant, it considered all sentencing factors revealed during the trial.

According to the court, the husband’s older brother and younger brother requested leniency for the wife during the trial, and the children also did not want their mother to be punished. Although the wife denied the crime, it was concluded that she was mentally unstable and unable to make rational judgments.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.