In May 2024, an 81-year-old man, A, was found dead at his home in Samcheok, Gangwon Province.

About five months later, the police concluded that A was presumed to have died by hanging and submitted an opinion to the prosecution to close the internal investigation without booking him.

However, the Gangneung Branch of the Chuncheon District Office of Public Prosecutors requested the police to conduct supplementary investigations, pointing out that no tools were found at the scene and evidence of suicide seemed insufficient.

During police questioning, A's wife confessed to the crime, stating, "I had a quarrel with my husband, with whom I usually did not get along, and strangled him to death." She was sent to the prosecution without detention in January of the following year.

The prosecution summoned the suspect twice, analyzed her statements, and secured A's medical records. Following six months of supplementary investigations, prosecutors were able to indict A's wife in January of this year.

Recently, as distrust in police investigations grows due to the Jeju missing person false-closure controversy, concerns are rising that the prosecution's verification authority in suspicious death cases could also become nominal.

While some members of the ruling bloc dismiss these controversies as unrelated to the abolition of the prosecution's supplementary investigation rights, voices inside and outside the prosecution retort that the issues are difficult to view as unrelated.

According to the legal community yesterday (August 30), the revised Criminal Procedure Act, which takes effect in October, stipulates that "when there is a dead body or a corpse suspected of an unnatural death, a prosecutor of the local public prosecutors' office with jurisdiction over the location must inspect the body."

The police-prosecution investigation guidelines also require the police to notify a prosecutor of the occurrence of an unnatural death case.

The police and the prosecutors must each draw up an inspection or verification protocol, send them to each other, and exchange opinions before closing the case.

At the time of the Park Jong-chul torture death case in 1987, the prosecution used these regulations to block the cremation of the body and direct an autopsy, enabling them to uncover the truth.

As the complete deprivation of prosecutors' investigative rights was actively discussed in 2022, multiple attempts were made to transfer the prosecution's authority to inspect bodies of unnatural deaths to the police, but the plans fell through in the face of public opposition.

The newly revised Criminal Procedure Act also leaves the authority to inspect bodies of unnatural death with prosecutors.

However, critics point out that as the prosecution's supplementary investigation rights disappear, even if prosecutors discover criminal charges during the process of inspecting an unnatural death body, they are blocked from directly collecting evidence such as conducting searches and seizures and interrogating suspects.

Calls have also continued to revive the system of mandatory transfer of all cases—where severe crimes such as murders and drug offenses are handed over to the prosecution without police self-closure—but these requests were not reflected.

A prosecution official expressed concern, saying, "Even if we find grounds for a murder charge during the autopsy process, we have no other way than to ask the police to conduct supplementary investigations. There will likely be changes to the autopsy procedures under the revised Criminal Procedure Act, but nothing has been finalized, leaving us in a state of confusion."

Lee Chang-hyun, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Law School, also pointed out, "The prosecution's authority to inspect bodies will not hold much meaning going forward. Since the police do not view the prosecution as a control mechanism, there is a high likelihood that irrational and unimaginable things will happen."

Previously, when indicting A's wife, the Gangneung Branch of the Chuncheon District Prosecutors' Office explained, "We revealed the full picture of the murder case in accordance with the provisions on the inspection of unnatural death bodies under the Criminal Procedure Act, and we were able to discover the material truth because the prosecutor's direct supplementary investigation was possible."

The 2022 Cheongju brother murder case is also cited as a representative case where the prosecution's supplementary investigation rights brought to light the truth of a murder that was nearly covered up.

At the time, despite autopsy results suggesting homicide, the police closed the case as a simple unnatural death based on the statement of a person in their 60s named Park, who claimed that his younger brother, who suffered from mental illness, frequently engaged in self-harm.

Although the prosecution requested a reinvestigation, the police took no particular action, and the Cheongju District Prosecutors' Office eventually undertook supplementary investigations, uncovering circumstances that Park had murdered his brother after about two years.

Park was detained and indicted on charges of bodily injury resulting in death, and a 6-year prison sentence was finalized.

The Supreme Prosecutors' Office's Forensic Science Department, which has tracked down key evidence in murder cases on multiple occasions, is also facing a crisis of survival.

The Supreme Prosecutors' Office's Forensic Science Department measures and analyzes the physiological responses of suspects who deny crimes or give conflicting statements to determine the truth.

It has been evaluated as having contributed to proving the guilt of offenders in cases such as the Itaewon murder case and the Gangbuk motel serial murders.

However, some members of the ruling bloc argue that the department should be transferred from the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, claiming it is inefficient due to overlapping operations with the National Forensic Service and can be abused as a roundabout tool for direct investigation.

Professor Lee Chang-hyun criticized, "Frontline police investigations are also highly likely to be paralyzed, and the key is to immediately address the problems that will emerge after the prosecution's supplementary investigation rights are abolished on October 2. It is a situation where they keep trying to build detour roads while blocking the straight road."

(Photo: Yonhap News)