The Seoul High Prosecutors' Office said on the 26th it filed an appeal to the Supreme Court against the appellate acquittal of Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Heo Jong-sik and former lawmakers Yoon Kwan-seok and Lim Jong-seong on charges including violating the Political Parties Act. Prosecutors said they appealed on grounds that "judgments differ by court" over the legality of procedures for securing digital evidence and that "a uniform standard is needed."
Heo and others were indicted on charges of exchanging cash envelopes to help Song Young-gil, then a candidate for party leader, win ahead of the Democratic Party of Korea's 2021 convention. According to prosecutors, at a meeting supporting Song held on Apr. 28, 2021, in a subcommittee room of the National Assembly's Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, former lawmaker Yoon handed one cash envelope containing 3 million won each to Heo, former lawmaker Lim, and others.
In the first trial, in August and September last year, the court sentenced Heo and former lawmaker Lim each to three months in prison, suspended for one year, and a forfeiture of 3 million won, and former lawmaker Yoon to nine months in prison, suspended for two years.
However, the Seoul High Court's Criminal Division 2 (presiding judge Kim Jong-ho) overturned the first trial on the 18th and acquitted all of them. The court deemed the mobile phone recordings of Lee Jung-geun, former deputy secretary-general of the Democratic Party, which provided the lead for the investigation, to be illegally collected evidence and did not recognize their admissibility. The court's view was that recordings found on a phone submitted during an influence-peddling investigation are difficult to use as evidence in a separate cash envelope case.
The court rejected prosecutors' claim of voluntary submission and pointed out that, looking at the overall context of the suspect interrogation record, there is significant room to interpret that the former deputy secretary-general expressed an intent to submit only for her own case. It then found that the violations of the search and seizure procedures were serious and substantially infringed due process.
Earlier, in the appeal of former lawmaker Lee Seong-man, who had been convicted at first instance on charges of receiving cash envelopes, the court also questioned the admissibility of the same recordings and acquitted him. Prosecutors have also appealed that appellate ruling.