[Reporter’s Notebook] How the "Three Judicial Reform Acts" Will Change Time in the Courtroom

Courtrooms Trapped by Personnel Moves, Hierarchy, and Face-Saving
Judges Say "Procedures Will Drag On Even More"
Rulings Themselves Become a Matter of "Risk Management"
Court Timelines Already Stretched Long
Delayed Justice...The Public Bears the Cost

"The XX District Court hands down a lot of not-guilty verdicts right after the February personnel reshuffle for prosecutors. Wouldn't it be burdensome to acquit a defendant when you have to keep seeing the same prosecutor face-to-face?"

Prosecutor A said that during his time as a trial prosecutor, he was under pressure to "manage the not-guilty rate." When the acquittal rate in his jurisdiction exceeded the national average, the district office chief ordered him to bring it down. He mounted an "ironclad defense of convictions." He went around visiting judges one by one, explaining the points at issue and pouring his efforts into maintaining the charges. From March to December that year, not a single not-guilty verdict was returned.

Judgments are not made solely on the basis of legal texts. A variety of factors come into play, including personnel moves, organizational dynamics, statistics, and public opinion. In legal circles, the marked drop in the number of rulings handed down in January and February is not seen as a coincidence. Around the time of transfer appointments, judges who are reassigned to courts far from KTX stations are flooded with recruitment offers from law firms, and in a reality where a first-year associate attorney (a lawyer employed by a law firm) can earn more than a high court division chief judge, many choose to leave the bench. Judges, too, calculate risks and rewards.

What would happen if another major variable, the so-called "Three Judicial Reform Acts," were added on top of this? Judges, with one voice, said that "procedures will drag on indefinitely," adding, "You are not punished just because you postpone a hearing date, are you?" From the perspective of a judge, cases that attract many complaints, cases with significant political repercussions, and cases likely to be overturned on appeal are all ones to shy away from. That is to avoid being charged with the crime of distorting the law. The case is postponed again and again until the next round of personnel reshuffles. It will also be difficult to expect judges to hand down rulings based firmly on their convictions.

But can delays in trials really be punished? Courtrooms are already mired in a "swamp of procedural justice," with hundreds of pages of documentary evidence, mass applications for witnesses, motions to recuse the panel, and repeated renewal procedures. In the first-instance trial over former Chief Justice Yang Sung-tae's abuse of judicial administrative authority, after the entire panel was replaced, the defense team for former Supreme Court Justice Park Byung-dae demanded that all existing audio recordings of witness examinations be played back. The playback procedure alone took about seven months. The trial effectively came to a halt. If a constitutional complaint against court rulings is introduced as well, it could easily take 10 years to reach a final disposition.

There is an expectation that increasing the number of Supreme Court justices from 14 to 26 will ease the backlog of appeals. However, many predict that if the criteria for granting appeals are relaxed, the number of cases will skyrocket. The argument that confidence in the judiciary has declined has some merit. However, a cool-headed assessment is needed as to whether the system will end up undermining other values. In our country, the time required for first-instance trials is 420.1 days in civil cases and 223.7 days in criminal cases. Over the past 10 years, civil cases have lengthened by half a year, and criminal cases by two months. If attempts to tighten control over judgments end up producing more delayed justice, it is the public that will have to bear the cost.