Supreme Court upholds life sentence in Daeheung-dong killing

Trial court had handed down 30-year term; appeals court raised it to life

Appeals court: defendant must be 'permanently isolated from society'

Supreme Court: life sentence 'cannot be deemed grossly unjust'

A court building. [The Herald Business DB]
A court building. [The Herald Business DB]

A man in his 30s has been sentenced to life in prison for killing a friend he had known since middle school — roughly 20 years — in the middle of Seoul's Mapo-gu district. The case has come to be known as the "Daeheung-dong acquaintance murder."

The trial court had handed down a 30-year sentence, taking into account the defendant's long history of mental illness, but the appeals court raised the penalty to life imprisonment, finding that his intent to kill had been firm and that the risk of reoffending was high. The Supreme Court agreed with that assessment and upheld the sentence.

The Supreme Court's Second Division, presided over by Justice Kwon Young-jun, confirmed the life sentence on Aug. 12 in the final appeal of the defendant, identified only by his surname Lee, who was charged with murder. "Examining the various sentencing factors on the record — including the defendant's age, conduct and circumstances, his relationship with the victim, the motive, means and outcome of the crime, and the situation after the offense — the court finds that, even taking into account the grounds raised in the appeal, it cannot be said that the lower court's imposition of life imprisonment and other penalties was grossly unjust," the court said.

Lee was indicted on murder charges after allegedly killing a man identified only as A, a friend since middle school, with a weapon he had prepared in advance near Daeheung Station in Mapo-gu on the night of Aug. 6 last year.

According to facts established by the court, Lee repeatedly pressed A while the two were drinking on the day of the attack, demanding to know: "Are you lying to me? Aren't you trying to hurt me?" He then produced the weapon he had brought and threatened A. When A fled, Lee chased him for about 180 meters before killing him. A died from multiple stab wounds.

Lee had been diagnosed with undifferentiated schizophrenia and other conditions since 2017 and had been receiving psychiatric treatment and medication. In May last year, however, he stopped treatment and medication on his own, saying the drugs made him drowsy and dazed while he was running a shop. His delusions that people around him were trying to harm him grew worse afterward.

On the day of the attack, Lee's delusions and aggression had intensified further. He told another acquaintance that he felt he was "being undermined at the national level," and visited the public affairs office of the Ministry of National Defense in Yongsan-gu and a police station — with a weapon stored in his vehicle.

Lee had also separately prepared the weapon used against A. Shortly after sending A a message asking to meet at around 5 a.m. that day, he ordered a weapon online. He received the delivery around 6 p.m. the same day and went to meet A with the weapon on him. Prosecutors indicted Lee on murder charges on Aug. 29 last year, placing him in detention.

The trial court sentenced Lee to 30 years in prison in February, taking into account that he admitted to the crime, had no prior convictions, and had suffered from auditory hallucinations and delusions due to schizophrenia and related conditions for more than a decade. The trial court found that "the defendant spent several hours drinking and talking with the victim on various topics before suddenly attacking him in a public place, and it appears he also intended to confirm whether the victim was truly trying to harm him. While he may have intended to kill the victim if that turned out to be the case, it does not appear that he summoned the victim from the outset with the definitive intent to kill him."

Prosecutors appealed, and the appeals court raised Lee's sentence to life imprisonment. The court focused on the fact that, even if Lee had not attacked A immediately upon meeting him, he had planned the crime by preparing a weapon in advance and had pursued and attacked A even after he fled. The court also noted that Lee did not stop attacking even after A lost consciousness, ruling that "the defendant's intent to kill was not impulsive or spontaneous but firm, and given the nature of the crime and the brutality of the method, the quality of the offense is extremely poor."

The appeals court also found that Lee's schizophrenia and other mental illness did not constitute grounds for a reduced sentence. It determined that Lee had voluntarily stopped psychiatric treatment despite knowing that doing so could harm those around him, and that he continued to suffer from delusions and hallucinations while showing little willingness to seek treatment — making the risk of reoffending high. "It appears necessary to permanently isolate the defendant from society in order to achieve the retributive purpose of punishment while also maintaining public safety and order," the court said.

Lee appealed the ruling, but the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's judgment, making the life sentence final.


yg@heraldcorp.com