Column Is Oh Se-hun's Appellate Acquittal a Fair and Just Judgment According to Law?

[The Era of Munhwa Now]—14

"In dubio pro reo.”

Common Sense and Expectations of the Law

This is not an attempt to debate Oh Se-hun's guilt or innocence. If guilty, then guilty; if not, then not guilty. This is common sense for ordinary people and what they expect from the law. When common citizens encounter large or small conflicts in life, they say "let's follow the law." This is because they believe that the law is just and fair.

Thus I must ask: In this ruling, did the court panel invoke the Latin legal maxim "In dubio pro reo"—that is, 'when in doubt, decide in favor of the defendant'—a cardinal principle of criminal law, and render an acquittal. But is this cardinal principle truly applied equally and upheld without exception to everyone in our society?

A Tilted Playing Field: The Privilege of 'Benefit of the Defendant'

This noble principle of modern criminal law was created as a shield of citizens to prevent the state from crushing innocent individuals with its power. Yet today, it is difficult to dismiss the suspicion that this shield has been misused not to protect the socially weak, but as the most sophisticated fortification allowing the legal cartel and the powerful with vast resources to slip through the net of justice.

What is most devastating to the public is this: Why does the application standard of the law differ so extremely depending on the court panel and judge? When a case is severely punished as guilty in the first trial but is reversed to acquittal in the appellate trial as easily as flipping one's palm, based on the appellate panel's disposition or interpretation, it resembles not an objective justice of the law but rather 'luck-based justice where fate depends on which judge one encounters.' If the law, which should be fair and predictable to all, wavers back and forth according to individual judges' discretion and scope of judgment, can it truly be called ‘justice of the law’?

The law proclaims formal fairness, but the substantive playing field is tilted from the start. Within the iron-clad defense network constructed by large law firms charging fees in the tens of millions of won and teams of lawyers with prior judicial service, the powerful monopolize the privileged resources to sculpt out ‘1% of doubt.’ Meanwhile, for ordinary defendants with even limited opportunity for argument, that ‘1% stroke of luck’ is but a luxury.

Silence in a Sacred Precinct: A Judiciary Without Reflection

Yet the judiciary persists in silence before this enormous distrust and cynicism. What genuine reflection is the judiciary undertaking regarding judicial credibility that continues to plummet? As if it were an ‘sanctuary free from blemish,’ it refuses to acknowledge errors and hides only behind the mechanical shield of ‘strict application of legal principles,’ turning a blind eye to the gap between public common sense and legal sensibility.

Why does such heated debate and conflict erupt every time a verdict is delivered? Is it not ultimately because the majority of citizens cannot empathize with that verdict?

Just as law does not exist for law itself, a verdict must not become an isolated fortress existing only for itself. Law must ultimately aim toward universal justice that citizens with common sense can understand and consent to.

But what is the reality today? When judicial decisions fail to gain public empathy, each person's thoughts and logic become weapons of their faction, attacking the other side and waging fierce battles. What remains in the end is only the division of a torn community and the deep wounds of conflict that make our society even more unhappy.

Citizens' Warning and the Path Forward for the Judiciary

In George Orwell's novel "Animal Farm," there are deceptive commandments revised by the dictatorial pigs.

“All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.”

Can we not ask whether today's judicial reality in our society is likewise exhibiting a corrupted privilege along the lines of "All defendants are equal before the law. But some defendants are more equal than others"? Our society must never be allowed to degenerate into an 'Animal Farm' that justifies the privileges of the established order while donning the mask of sophisticated legal reasoning.

Now the judiciary must step out from behind the walls of silence and defense and begin painful self-reflection and introspection. It must abandon the arrogance of regarding itself as a sanctuary free from errors and align itself with the eye level of common sense that citizens can empathize with.

If the judiciary continues to turn away from self-reflection and hides behind the fortifications of the established order, citizens' demands for reform will only intensify, and history may repeat itself in which reform is ultimately imposed by the power of the sovereign. Citizens have a history of driving out unjust power through the Candlelight Revolution and overcoming democratic crisis through the Light Revolution.

All defendants must truly be equal before the law. But if that equality works uniquely as ‘lenient benefits’ only for those with power and wealth, and the judiciary continues to render judgments divorced from the spirit of the times and social empathy, then rule of law is not a norm sustaining society but merely another form of violence. The judiciary must now come to understand that true justice does not lie imprisoned in cold legal texts but only breathes within the empathy and trust of the people.