South Korean woman exonerated after wrongful conviction for murdering father in 2000
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Ms Kim Shin-hye had been incarcerated since being subject to investigation for patricide in 2000.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: PIXABAY
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SEOUL - A 47-year-old woman was cleared of a patricide charge in a retrial Jan 6, after spending nearly 25 years behind bars for the murder of her father that she was found not to have committed.
The Haenam branch of the Gwangju District Court found Ms Kim Shin-hye not guilty of murdering her father and disposing of his body in 2000, citing a lack of evidence and unclear motive for the defendant to commit the crime.
It pointed out that Ms Kim’s confession in the investigation, which had been the focal point of the guilty verdict over two decades ago, was not able to be used as evidence since she had reversed her statement.
Ms Kim had said that she lied in the police investigation to prevent her brother from going to prison, believing he would be sent to prison without her intervention.
Despite retracting the confession, she was sentenced to life in prison by the Supreme Court in 2001.
She had been incarcerated since being subject to investigation for patricide in 2000.
“It is possible that Ms Kim falsely confessed (to murder) due to different reasons,” the court said in its ruling.
It added that it is unclear if Ms Kim’s father had died due to a large amount of sleeping pills given by the defendant, as investigators had claimed.
It pointed out that the autopsy on the victim did not show any indications of him taking any type of drug in large doses, and said that his extremely high blood alcohol content of 0.303 per cent at the time could have been the cause of death.
The court also said that the victim’s sexual abuse of Ms Kim, which was initially thought to be the motive, did not appear to have been true.
Ms Kim said in later statements that she lied about the sexual abuse, after being coerced by a relative who said it would help reduce her sentence.
“Although suspicions remain over Ms Kim urging her siblings to give false statements, and over inconsistencies in her own testimonies, such circumstances alone is not enough to warrant a guilty verdict,” the court said.
Despite the initial verdict by South Korea’s top court in 2001, it was belatedly alleged that irregularities occurred during the police investigation into Ms Kim.
She claimed that police searched her home without a warrant and coerced her into confessing.
The initial case was built mostly on Ms Kim’s confession alongside circumstantial evidence of her father’s multiple life insurance policies, three of which had been cancelled at the time of his death.
While police said the victim was drugged with sleeping pills in a drink, they did not find the drink, the pills or traces of the medication inside any of the articles Ms Kim confessed to having used in her purported crime. THE KOREA HERALD/ ASIA NEWS NETWORK
