The court has rejected "unforced" confessions by three murder suspects and exonerated them in two recent rulings, which legal experts interpret as the judiciary's move to place greater importance on the "innocent until proven guilty" principle.
Last Thursday, the Gwangju District Court found a 59-year-old Baek not guilty of poisoning his wife, identified by her family name, Choi, in a murder case in Sucheon, last July. The court also gave their 26-year-old daughter, a suspected accomplice, a not-guilty verdict but convicted her of falsely accusing a neighbor of raping her.
Initially, death and life sentences were asked respectively for the father and daughter. The prosecutors appealed the decisions.
"Their confessions, which are the basis of this murder case, leave too many holes to be taken as convincing pieces of evidence," said Senior Judge Hong Jun-ho in his ruling.
Hong cited the normalcy the Baek family maintained despite the suspects' allegations that Baek had habitually raped the daughter.
The judge also raised an issue over the daughter's behavior shown in the course of questioning, being hostile to her father but sympathetic toward her deceased mother.
Judge Hong also pointed out that there was a big question mark regarding the daughter's claim that she had conspired with her father, who had habitually molested her, while her confession also lacked consistency.
The court said that the father's confession that he had put a bottle containing a poisoned drink in the refrigerator rather than discarding it was not credible.
Although the father said that he bought the drink from a neighborhood store, the store was found not to carry that particular brand, the judge said.
The court's ruling also expressed doubts over the effectiveness of the cyanide that the father claimed he had obtained from a friend 17 years ago. "If not well sealed, the court has difficulty in believing that the poison could have remained deadly," the court ruling read.
Another case that showed the court's unwillingness to accept a confession dates back to last December, when a district court found a man who had confessed to a murder not guilty. Last year, the prosecutors reopened the case that had been classified as unresolved for eight years.
Reinvestigation led to a man named Park as a suspect in the case in which a woman was found dead after being sexually assaulted.
According to the investigation records, the victim's clothing was found in a place far away from where Park claimed he had discarded it, while the murder weapon was not discovered.
The court also said that the prosecutors' incriminating evidence was not supported by Park's confession, pointing out that he had repeatedly changed his statement.
"These two rulings show the court's reaffirmed stance that confessions can be incriminating only when they are consistent with and corroborate other evidence," a legal expert commented.