Man Acquitted After Police Destroy Evidence Video of Gambling Raid

▲ A police officer (The photo above is not related to the content of this article.)

A man who fought a legal battle claiming that a video of a gambling raid, which police had arbitrarily destroyed, would prove his innocence has been acquitted.

Judge Kwon So-young of the Seoul Northern District Court acquitted a man in his 40s, identified as A, of gambling charges on July 9.

A, a foreign national, was indicted by the Seoul Jungnang Police Station on charges of gambling after exchanging chips worth 900,000 won at an illegal Texas Hold'em gambling den in Nowon-gu, Seoul, in December 2023.

A claimed, "I did exchange chips for fun, but I did not actually sit at the game table and gamble."

At the time, A, who was near the smoking area opposite the game table, even used his own mobile phone to film the investigators conducting the search and seizure.

A requested the police's evidence-gathering video of the scene to use as evidence in court.

He presumed that the video would show him not participating in gambling.

However, the police did not provide the video.

A eventually filed a request for information disclosure with the police, but received a response stating that the video "does not exist because it was destroyed immediately after being recorded."

A subsequent memo report provided by the police stated, "The charges can be proven through the full confessions of the gamblers," and added, "The video was entirely destroyed because it was deemed to have no value as evidence, as it mostly consisted of the suspects' shouting and swearing, and there was no need to use it as investigative material."

An official from the Jungnang Police Station stated, "We judged that it was not evidence because no gambling scenes were captured in the video at the time," adding, "We determined that the charges could be proven through the statements of the gambling den employees and the chip exchange records even without the video."

However, the court's judgment was different.

The court acquitted A, stating that the only direct evidence of A's gambling was the testimony of the gambling den employees, which was difficult to trust.

The decisive factor for the acquittal was that the employees changed their statements in court, saying they "could not remember exactly."

The short video A had taken with his phone at the time was admitted as evidence in court, and when the defense attorney questioned the employees while showing them this video, they changed their stories.

A said, "If only the police's evidence video had existed, I wouldn't have had to suffer through a two-year trial," adding, "It is logically incomprehensible why they deleted such important evidence."

Opinions among police and experts regarding the deletion of the evidence video are divided.

Some investigators argued, "It is not realistic to submit all evidence, so investigators can make decisions on what to delete."

However, experts pointed out that it is highly unusual for the police to immediately delete a video they had recorded and not submit it to the court as evidence.

They argued that suspects should also be able to utilize evidence secured by the police, and that the very act of deleting evidence under the pretext that it is irrelevant to proving the charges is wrong.

Lee Yoon-ho, a professor of police administration at Dongguk University, said, "From the suspect's perspective, this can only be seen as a referral for punishment," adding, "All evidence related to the case must be submitted so that prosecutors can determine whether to indict or judges can objectively consider the circumstances during the trial."

He added, "Arbitrarily deleting and disposing of evidence can be seen as the police exceeding the scope of their authority."

Lee Woong-hyuk, a professor of police science at Konkuk University, also said, "In principle, it is inappropriate for evidence-gathering videos to be lost or damaged," and added, "The principle is that it is not the investigative agency, but the judge, who determines whether evidence is related to a crime."

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