Expanding Grounds for Dismissal of Indictment... What are the Two Newly Added Provisions?

[Anchor]

It has been confirmed that the revision bill to the Criminal Procedure Act pushed by the pan-ruling bloc includes expanding the grounds on which courts can decide to dismiss an indictment. While the Democratic Party maintains that it merely subdivided the existing grounds, the conservative opposition has raised claims questioning whether the move was made with President Lee Jae-myung's trials in mind.

This is an exclusive report by reporter Go Jeong-hyeon.

[Reporter]

The current Criminal Procedure Act stipulates six grounds, such as double jeopardy, under which a court must "dismiss" an indictment brought by a prosecutor.

It has been confirmed that the pan-ruling bloc's latest revision bill expands these grounds.

A new provision has been established stating that if an indictment was brought following severely unlawful investigations or through a gross abuse of prosecutorial discretion, a ruling to "dismiss the indictment" must be handed down.

This provision was not in the Democratic Party's task force bill.

Instead, it was content originally found in bills proposed by certain pan-ruling bloc lawmakers, including Kim Yong-min and Park Eun-jung, and has now been included in the resolution passed by the Legislation and Judiciary Committee's subcommittee.

In a completely opposite context, the People Power Party previously proposed a bill to completely abolish prosecutors' authority to withdraw indictments.

The Democratic Party explained that the revision simply makes the existing provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act regarding the requirements for dismissing an indictment more specific.

[Kim Seung-won / Legislation and Judiciary Committee Secretary (Democratic Party Lawmaker): These are cases that have already been recognized by existing Supreme Court precedents. You can think of it as having codified those precedents.]

However, the conservative opposition argued that the Democratic Party is attempting to pressure the court to issue rulings dismissing indictments—seeing that withdrawing indictments is difficult—with the five suspended criminal trials related to President Lee Jae-myung in mind.

[Park Choong-kwon / Chief Spokesperson for the People Power Party: This is an unprecedented bulletproof provision. This single provision paves the way to entirely wipe out the President's trials.]

During the Legislation and Judiciary Committee subcommittee meeting on the 15th, Vice Minister of Justice Lee Jin-su expressed the opinion regarding expressions such as "severely unlawful investigations" or "gross abuse" that, "Additional review is needed to determine whether they violate the principle of clarity, as the standards and scope for judgment are not presented in the law."

(Photo courtesy of Yonhap News / Video reporting: Oh Young-chun, Kim Yong-woo | Video editing: Oh Young-taek | Design: Han Heung-soo, Seo Seung-hyun)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.