In the retrial of the "cyanide makgeolli murder case," in which a father and daughter were accused of killing his wife and her mother, both were acquitted. It comes 16 years after the incident.
The Criminal Division 2 of the Gwangju High Court (High Court Judge Lee Ui-young) on the 28th acquitted a person surnamed Baek (75) and his daughter (41) in a retrial on charges including murder and parricide, for which they had each received finalized sentences of life imprisonment and 20 years in prison.
The cyanide makgeolli murders refer to a case on July 6, 2009, in a village in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, in which two of four residents who shared makgeolli, not knowing it was mixed with the poison cyanide, died and two were injured.
Prosecutors indicted the Baek father and daughter, saying they conspired to put cyanide in makgeolli, had it drunk by his wife, a person surnamed Choi (then 59), and Choi's acquaintance, causing their deaths, and inflicted serious injuries on two residents who drank with them.
Prosecutors viewed the Baek father and daughter as having an improper relationship and believed they killed the wife and mother. During a separate case investigation in which Baek's daughter allegedly framed an innocent male neighbor as a criminal, prosecutors obtained statements that the father and daughter plotted the crime and brought them to trial.
The Baek father and daughter were acquitted at the first trial due to reasons including unreliable statements, but in 2011 the appeals court found them guilty, and the Supreme Court finalized sentences of life imprisonment and 20 years in prison, respectively.
However, in January 2022, the father and daughter applied for a retrial, saying, "Prosecutors abused their investigative powers to conduct leading questioning, and clear evidence of innocence was found," and in January 2024 the Gwangju High Court decided to open a retrial.
The retrial panel said, "There was leading questioning by the prosecutor in the defendants' statements." It also found it difficult to conclude that the Baek father and daughter had an improper relationship.
Baek is a primary school dropout with poor Korean, and suspicion arose from the fact that he finished reviewing the records of lengthy prosecutorial interrogations in just a few minutes each time. He also submitted a self-written statement that logically organized the crime's circumstances without typos, yet it was written in crooked handwriting. His daughter, who appears to have borderline intelligence, was also suspected of having been subjected to coercive investigation, including thought implantation and leading questioning.
At the sentencing hearing of the retrial held on Aug. 19, attorney Park Jun-young, representing the Baek father and daughter, argued, "This case is an example of prosecutors exploiting the defendants' vulnerabilities, including a father who cannot write or read and a daughter with borderline intelligence." The Baek father and daughter served 15 years before being released in January after the decision to open a retrial suspended the execution of their sentences.