Lee Chang-on, a professor at Ewha Womans University School of Law, predicted that the revised Criminal Procedure Act, set to take effect this October, will cause considerable confusion in legal education.
Together with Cho Kyun-suk, professor emeritus at Ewha Womans University, Professor Lee has been writing the textbook "Criminal Procedure Law," succeeding the late Lee Jae-sang, a distinguished professor at Ewha Womans University and a leading authority in criminal law. "Criminal Procedure Law" is a representative foundational text that has been the most widely read among law students for the longest time. Lee participated in the revision work from the 13th to the 16th editions.
In a telephone interview with Seoul Economic Daily on the 31st of last month, Professor Lee pointed out that after the revised act takes effect, it could become difficult to write a complete textbook or provide consistent legal education. "Because matters requiring revision may continue to arise in related systems and regulations, it will not be easy to write a book with completeness and teach based on it," he said. "The criminal justice system is changing so significantly that it is difficult to maintain the existing theoretical explanations as they are." He added, "The identity and roles of prosecutors and police, and the relationship between the two institutions, will have to be described anew from the beginning, but it is unclear whether this can be systematically organized in a short period."
Professor Lee expressed concern that various side effects are likely to occur as the institutional reform is being pushed forward without a concrete design of the criminal justice system, such as clearly establishing the roles of the prosecution and the police. "Problems such as poor police investigations, an increase in unresolved cases at the prosecution, a growing burden on the courts, and an increase in acquittals could grow to an unmanageable level within the next two to four years," he predicted.
He also assessed as having low effectiveness the mechanism in the revised act that limits the police's supplementary investigation period to one month and requires the prosecution to maintain the case number. Even if the case number is maintained, if supplementary investigation is not conducted sufficiently, case processing could be delayed or lead to poor indictments, he said.
"If a prosecutor indicts a case without sufficiently supplementing it, the court's trial burden will ultimately grow and acquittals could increase," Professor Lee explained. "Conversely, if indictment is postponed on the grounds that supplementation is insufficient, it will become a structure where unresolved cases at the prosecution only keep piling up."
He also expressed concern about the expansion of grounds for dismissal of prosecution included in the revised Criminal Procedure Act. "Grounds for dismissal of prosecution were added using vague and abstract terms, and it is questionable whether this can produce the effect of enhancing the rigor and predictability of criminal procedure," he said. "Leaving it to the court's interpretation without establishing specific standards is also inappropriate."
