Former Gyeonggi Province Vice Governor for Peace Lee Hwa-young was sentenced to four months in prison on the 20th in the first trial of a jury trial. Lee was indicted on charges including perjury before the National Assembly after raising the "salmon drinking party" allegation, and the court found those charges guilty.
At the sentencing hearing in the jury trial for the former vice governor, held under the Suwon District Court Criminal Division 11 (Presiding Judge Song Byung-hun, Director General), the court sentenced Lee to four months in prison on the charge of violating the Act on Testimony and Appraisal before the National Assembly (perjury).
The charge of violating the Political Funds Act, which was indicted together, resulted in a not-guilty verdict. As for charges related to abuse of power in connection with aid to North Korea, obstruction of the exercise of rights, obstruction of the performance of official duties by deceit, and violation of the local government finance Act, the court dismissed the indictment, saying prosecutors abused their right to prosecute.
The court reached a conclusion after deliberating for nine hours and 30 minutes from 6 p.m. the previous day. The court respected as much as possible the verdicts returned by the seven jurors in the jury trial.
On the perjury charge over the "salmon drinking party," the jurors split four guilty to three not guilty. The court found Lee guilty, saying, "Statements by those involved who were in the prosecutor's office are consistent or mutually corroborate each other, but the defendant's statements lack consistency and are not credible."
On the alleged collusion with former SSANGBANGWOOL Chairman Kim Seong-tae to "split donations" (violation of the Political Funds Act), all seven jurors returned a not-guilty verdict, saying it was "not proven to the extent of excluding reasonable doubt." The court accepted this.
The jurors found that charges including abuse of power related to saplings and flour aid to North Korea did not constitute prosecutorial abuse of the right to prosecute (yes 2, no 5). The court overturned that finding on its own authority.
Referring to a related case, the court said, "When the prosecutor indicted former Gyeonggi Province Director General for Peace Cooperation Shin Myung-seop, the indictment described collusion with the former vice governor even though there was no evidence to prove a co-conspirator relationship," and added, "Forcing a guilty-leaning determination first in another person's trial who was not even indicted is a clear abuse of the right to prosecute by the prosecution."
Immediately after the sentencing, the defense team for the former vice governor told reporters they would appeal. The defense said, "We have consistently asserted the fact that there was a drinking party, and only the memory of the date was unclear," adding, "The former vice governor also showed a 'truthful response' in a lie detector test."
This jury trial ran for 10 days from on the 8th, excluding weekends. Earlier, at the final hearing, prosecutors sought two years in prison for the former vice governor's perjury and abuse of power charges, and, separately, a fine of 5 million won for the Political Funds Act violation.
The former vice governor is already serving time after the Supreme Court finalized a sentence of seven years and eight months in the SSANGBANGWOOL remittances-to-North-Korea case and others.