The Seoul High Court's 6-2 Criminal Division, presided over by Chief Judge Choi Eun-jung, Lee Ye-seul, and Jeong Jae-o, hearing the case against Lee Jae-myung, leader of the Democratic Party of Korea for violation of the Public Official Election Act, announced on the 19th that the fourth trial will be held and the decision will take place as scheduled on the 26th.
The court will hold the fifth trial session on the 26th at 10:30 a.m. and will conduct witness examinations of the sentencing witnesses requested by both the prosecution and Lee's side. A sentencing witness is one that the court relies on as a reference in determining the sentence.
The sentencing witnesses chosen include Jeong Jun-hee, a professor of information society media at Hanyang University, from Lee's side, and Kim Seong-cheon, a professor at the Korea University Law School, from the prosecution's side. Each witness will be examined for 30 minutes.
The court will hold the decision hearing on the same day at 2 p.m. The examination of the defendant, Lee, will take place for 1 hour and 20 minutes, followed by the prosecution's final opinion statement and the defendant's closing statement, each lasting one hour. Considering that a verdict is usually made about a month after the decision hearing, the second trial verdict could be expected as early as the end of March.
The court granted the prosecution's request to amend the indictment. Previously, the court had requested the prosecution to specify false information regarding the indictment during the last trial session. The prosecution noted, "Through the amendment of the indictment, we specifically linked Lee's actual statements and false information in each interview related to Kim Moon-ki," adding that they also separately recorded false statements related to the Baekhyeon-dong case.
The prosecution presented three charges, stating that Lee had "not known Kim Moon-ki during his term as mayor," "did not play golf with Kim Moon-ki during the business trip abroad," and "came to know Kim Moon-ki after being indicted for violation of the Public Official Election Act." They specified how each of Lee's four broadcast interviews corresponds to these charges through the indictment amendment.
Lee's side argued regarding the amendment of the indictment, saying, "The prosecution is logically jumping to conclusions when interpreting the meaning of Lee's statements," and claimed that they interpreted Lee's statement about not knowing Kim Moon-ki during his tenure as mayor as completely denying all relations with Kim Moon-ki.
During the trial, witness testimony was also conducted regarding Mr. A, who worked at the Korea Food Research Institute while Lee served as the mayor of Seongnam. Mr. A testified that there was no pressure from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport regarding the change of use for the Food Research Institute site, stating that they would raise the issue of dereliction of duty.
Lee has been convicted of violating the election law for his statements suggesting that there was "pressure from the Ministry of Land" regarding the allegations of preferential treatment in changing the use of the Korea Food Research Institute site in Baekhyeon-dong, Seongnam, and his assertion that he "did not play golf abroad" with the late Kim Moon-ki, former head of the Development Division 1 of the Seongnam Urban Development Corporation, receiving a sentence of 1 year in prison, suspended for 2 years.