Yoon Seong-yeo, now in his fifties, was found guilty on Thursday after a new trial in the northwestern city of Suwon for the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl in his room in Hwaseong, then rural, undeveloped. area near the capital of the country Seoul.
In a verdict released Thursday, Judge Park Jeong-je found that police had used torture, including sleep deprivation, and illegal detention to obtain Yoon’s confession of the 1988 murder.
“As a member of the judiciary, I apologize to the defendants, who suffered great physical and mental pain, for the court not functioning properly as the last bastion of human rights,” he said. We sincerely hope that the new trial in this case will be a little comforting and help restore the defendant’s honor. “
The result means that Yoon’s name is finally erased, more than 30 years after the murder. It is also a rare result in South Korea, where only a small fraction of lawsuits are accepted, according to experts.
“I am relieved that the final sentence finds me innocent,” Yoon said after the verdict. “I can drop that heavy load I’ve been carrying for 30 years and get some rest.”
Yoon has claimed his innocence for years, but was only granted a new trial after police made a breakthrough in the case last year.
In September, police announced that new DNA tests linked at least some of Hwaseong’s murders to Lee Chun-jae, who has been in prison since 1994 for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law. The following month, Lee confessed to the 10 murders and four others that police did not provide details.
Coerced confession
At the new month-long trial, Yoon’s lawyers argued that his client, who was a 22-year-old uneducated repairman with lame childhood polio when he was arrested, was forced by police to confess.
Yoon told CNN that he was handcuffed to a room for three days, that he was not allowed to sleep and that he barely ate during interrogation.
“We bow and apologize to all victims of Lee Chun-jae’s crimes, families of victims and victims of police investigations, including Yoon,” Bae said, noting that other people had suffered “police malpractice” during the Hwaseong’s initial research.
According to Lee Soo-jung, a professor of forensic psychology at Kyonggi University, it was common in the 1980s for suspected South Korean criminals to stay awake for long periods of time to extract a confession. Sleep deprivation is considered a form of torture.
In an interview with CNN in November, the commissioner general of the National Police Agency of Korea, Kim Chang-yong, said that last year’s police investigation revealed that the police had used illegal and technical confinements. incorrect research. He said the decision to reveal past crimes showed the commitment of the police not to make the same mistakes.
“It was a shameful and illegal investigation,” he said. “I think it should never happen again and that’s why we need checks and balances. The police work hard not to repeat past mistakes.”
Cold case resolved
For decades, Hwaseong’s murders, which were revisited in “Memories of Murder,” a 2003 film by “Parasite” director Bong Joon Ho, remained unsolved. Lee’s confession may have helped close the families of the victims.
Kim said police profiles interviewed Lee 52 times for nearly seven months before admitting all the crimes he had committed. “He didn’t confess easily,” Kim said.
“I didn’t think the crimes would be buried forever,” Lee said. “I came, testified and described the crimes in the hope that (the victims and their families) would find some solace when the truth was revealed. I will live my life with remorse.”
What happens next?
Yoon can now claim compensation for the 20 years he spent unjustly imprisoned. One of Yoon’s lawyers, Park Joon-young, told CNN earlier this year that Yoon could probably expect more than a million dollars in compensation.
Yoon has previously told CNN that no amount of money can compensate him for the years he spent in prison and the impact on his reputation and family.
Police plan to issue a white paper on the Hwaseong case and police failures during the initial investigation. Kim said it’s “impossible” to imagine these failures happening now.
There is unlikely to be justice for the families of the Hwaseong victims.
Although Lee has confessed to the murders, he cannot be prosecuted for the Hwaseong cases, as the statute of limitations for those murders has expired.