Confirmed Summary Order Relief via Prosecutor General's Emergency Appeal
"No Effect of Indictment on Defendant Erroneously Listed on the Record"
A man in his 40s who nearly had a criminal record due to the prosecutor entering the resident registration number of a wrong person with the same name as the defendant when filing a summary indictment for assault charges was granted relief by the Supreme Court.
According to the legal community on the 31st, the Supreme Court's First Division (Presiding Justice Oh Kyung-mi) overturned the original ruling that recognized Mr. A's assault charge as guilty and sentenced him to a fine of 700,000 won by summary order, and dismissed the indictment.
Mr. B was investigated by the police on suspicion of assaulting Mr. Kang (then 19 years old), whom he happened to encounter at a park in Pyeongtaek-si, Gyeonggi Province, on April 27 last year, on the grounds that Kang had usually ignored and provoked him.
The prosecutor who received the case transferred it to the court and requested a summary order imposing a fine of 700,000 won, but entered Mr. A's resident registration number and registration address instead of Mr. B's. The two were homonyms with the same name.
On October 7 last year, the court issued a summary order sentencing Mr. A to a fine of 700,000 won as requested by the prosecution, and the personal information of Mr. A was recorded as entered by the prosecutor in the summary order issued by the court. Since Mr. A did not appeal, the summary order was finalized on November 15 last year.
After realizing that the wrong person had been indicted and fined, the prosecution filed an extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court in April. An extraordinary appeal is an emergency relief procedure that the Prosecutor General can file when it is discovered after a judgment has been finalized that the trial violated the law.
The court stated, "Due to the clerical error, the effect of the indictment does not extend to the defendant listed in the indictment, and since the prosecutor did not correct the clerical error, the court must dismiss the indictment. Nevertheless, if the summary order was issued and finalized without such measures, it constitutes a violation of the law in the judgment and is disadvantageous to the defendant in the original judgment."
It continued, "The claim of the extraordinary appeal pointing this out is valid. Therefore, the original judgment is overturned, and the case against the defendant will be retried."
The court concluded, "Since there was no proper indictment against the defendant (Mr. A), and the prosecutor did not correct the clerical error, the indictment is dismissed according to the Criminal Procedure Act."
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