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| A man surnamed Yoon, who claimed he was wrongfully convicted of killing a teenage girl in 1988, reads a statement during a press conference at the Gyeonggi Central Bar Association building in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, Wednesday, before applying for a retrial. / Yonhap |
By Kang Seung-woo
A man who spent nearly 20 years in prison, after being found guilty of raping and killing a teenage girl, applied for a retrial, Wednesday, claiming he was wrongfully convicted.
"I hope the truth about the murder case comes out and I will be acquitted and recover my reputation," the 52-year-old, surnamed Yoon, told the press before filing the retrial request at Suwon District Court.
Yoon, then 22, was arrested in 1988 for killing a 13-year-old girl at her home and was later sentenced to life in prison after admitting to the crime. However, he claimed in the higher courts that police forced him to make a false confession after they assaulted and tortured him, but the appeals court and the Supreme Court upheld the previous ruling. After spending 19 years and six months behind bars, he was released in 2009 for good behavior.
The application to challenge his conviction 31 years later comes after Lee Chun-jae, 56, the key suspect in nine of the 10 serial murders between 1986 and 1991 in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, confessed recently to raping and killing the girl as well. Before the confession was made, the crime had been seen as a copycat murder committed by Yoon. In September, police identified Lee, already in jail for a separate crime, as a prime suspect in the decades-old cold case.
"I hope the court will fairly review my case to exonerate me of the murder charge," Yoon said.
Ahead of applying for a retrial, Yoon and his legal team held a press conference, where they said new evidence proves Yoon's innocence.
"Lee precisely remembered and told investigators the victim's home structure and his infiltration route," said Park Joon-young, Yoon's lawyer.
Park added that the National Forensic Service's written appraisals that were used as key evidence in naming Yoon as the suspect were based on inconclusive evidence.
The lawyer also claimed that police had illegally detained his client, who has a limp from polio, and beat him and treated him harshly, all of which constitute investigators' offenses while on duty. Based on Yoon's testimony, Park said the police officers at the time drafted a written statement of confession for Yoon who had completed only three years of elementary school education and thus was not good at Korean spelling.
Finally, Park asked a court to permit the retrial, considering that Yoon had no opportunity to be defended by court-appointed lawyers through his trials.
"By requesting a retrial, we are trying to acquit Yoon, who spent 20 years in prison on a false charge, and to take advantage of this as an opportunity to adjust the nation's judicial practices," he said.
