Supreme Court: "No Diminished Capacity If Crime Details Explained to 119 Right After Offense"

15-Year Sentence Upheld for Killing Live-In Partner
Claim That Call to 119 Was a "Voluntary Surrender" Also Rejected

The Supreme Court has ruled that a person is unlikely to have been in a state of diminished mental capacity due to intoxication if, immediately after committing a crime, they called 119, explained what happened, and gave a detailed account of the circumstances during police questioning.

The Supreme Court in Seocho-gu, Seoul. Yonhap News Agency

According to legal sources on Oct. 21, the Supreme Court's First Division, presided over by Justice Ma Yong-ju, recently upheld a lower court ruling sentencing A to 15 years in prison for murder.

A had been living with B for about four months. The two argued because B, who was intoxicated, was shouting, and A tried to hit B with a blunt object. When B took it away and struck A in the chest, A became enraged, grabbed a weapon from the kitchen, and stabbed B once in the left abdomen, piercing deep into the body. B died from blood loss and other injuries.

The key issues were whether A intended to kill B, whether A was in a state of diminished mental capacity due to intoxication, and whether the sentence should be reduced because A called 119 after the crime and claimed to have voluntarily surrendered.

The first trial sentenced A to 15 years in prison. It found that A had intended to kill B and that the manner in which A committed the crime was egregious. However, it considered the crime's having been committed on impulse and A's call to 119 afterward as mitigating circumstances. The second trial also dismissed A's appeal, rejecting the claim of diminished mental capacity based on the report made immediately after the crime and A's statements.

The Supreme Court likewise found no error in the lower court's ruling. The justices determined that A was unlikely to have been in a state of diminished mental capacity, considering that A explained the circumstances of the crime to the 119 emergency service immediately afterward and gave a relatively detailed account of the events during police questioning.

The court also rejected the claim of voluntary surrender. It held that even if a voluntary surrender is recognized, reducing or waiving a sentence is at the court's discretion, and there was no legal error in declining to reduce A's sentence on that basis.

The justices also said that A's claims, raised for the first time in the appeal to the Supreme Court, concerning the illegality of the arrest in the act and abuse of prosecutorial authority were not proper grounds for appeal because they had not been subject to review in the second trial.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.