Human Rights Commission: "Prosecutors' Failure to Release After Supreme Court Sentence Completion Constitutes Human Rights Violation"

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] The National Human Rights Commission of Korea has determined that the prosecution's failure to release a detainee despite the detention period exceeding the sentence term, confirmed simultaneously with the Supreme Court's ruling, constitutes a violation of the constitutional right to 'personal liberty.'

The Human Rights Commission announced on the 30th that it recommended the Minister of Justice and the Prosecutor General to take disciplinary action against the prosecutors and investigators involved in the execution of the sentence and to conduct job training for prosecutors and staff involved in trial work to prevent similar cases from recurring.

The complainant, Mr. A, filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission, arguing that although his sentence ended simultaneously with the Supreme Court ruling, he was not released and was continuously detained until an arrest warrant was issued for another case.

According to the Human Rights Commission's investigation, Mr. A was detained in November 2019 on charges including forgery of private documents, sentenced to one year in prison in both the first and second trials, and his sentence was finalized with the Supreme Court's dismissal of his appeal on November 26 last year. However, despite the fact that the pretrial detention period (381 days) exceeded the sentence term (one year) at the time of the Supreme Court ruling, the prosecution did not release Mr. A through sentence execution guidance and only issued sentence execution guidance (release) for the existing detention case after an arrest warrant was issued for another case six days later.

In response, the prosecution argued, "During the appeal trial, a decision to renew the detention period was made, and the dismissal of the appeal does not constitute grounds for the invalidation of the arrest warrant under the Criminal Procedure Act," adding, "Since the Supreme Court did not cancel the detention of the complainant after the ruling, the arrest warrant remains valid even after the dismissal of the appeal."

However, the Human Rights Commission judged that detention is recognized as 'pretrial detention' until the final judgment is confirmed, and once a custodial sentence is finalized, the arrest warrant naturally loses its effect. Therefore, continuing detention based on a renewal decision made during the appeal trial after the sentence has been finalized is not permissible.

Furthermore, in the case of a non-custodial case consolidated and heard by the Supreme Court, although a six-month prison sentence was handed down in the first trial and the Supreme Court issued a remand ruling on the case, no separate decision regarding detention was made. Unless the Supreme Court makes a separate decision on detention until the case records reach the remand court, the validity of the arrest warrant based on the renewal of the detention period during the appeal trial does not remain in the remand trial of the non-custodial case.

Meanwhile, the prosecution claimed that the detention period exceeding one year in the custody case was counted toward the sentence term of the non-custodial case, arguing that this was not illegal detention. However, the Human Rights Commission stated that the counting of pretrial detention days and the validity of the arrest warrant are separate issues, and that counting illegally detained days toward the sentence term cannot cure the defect of detention, as counting pretrial detention days toward the main sentence presupposes lawful pretrial detention.

The Human Rights Commission said, "The prosecution's argument effectively acknowledges the 'diversion' of the detention period, which contradicts the purpose of the Criminal Procedure Act that limits detention periods on a per-case basis."

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