Investigation into a separate case using a recording file on the ‘Supreme Prosecutor’s Office server’… “Illegal”

The Supreme Court ruled that it was illegal for the prosecution to store recording files confiscated for criminal investigation on the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office server and then use them to investigate a separate case that was not the subject of the original investigation. The prosecution said, “Currently, we are not conducting any special investigations using the information stored on the server.”

According to the legal community on the 26th, the first division of the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Kim Seon-su) overturned the original judgment that sentenced Mr. was returned to the Chuncheon District Court.

Mr. A, an investigative secretary at the Wonju branch of the Chuncheon District Prosecutors’ Office, received a request from Mr. B, a Wonju city official, in May 2018 to “delay the market-related investigation.” Accordingly, Mr. A got involved in the case and postponed the investigation, and informed Mr. B of his plans to request an arrest warrant. Prosecutors indicted Mr. A in April 2019.

The problem is that the prosecution initially discovered clues to Mr. A’s charges while investigating Mr. B’s other corruption case. The prosecution confiscated Mr. B’s mobile phone in December 2018 and registered the internal files on the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office’s digital evidence management server ‘Dinet’. Here, recordings of phone calls and text messages exchanged between the two people regarding the solicitation were discovered. Even after confirming this, the prosecution proceeded with the investigation for three months without confiscating or securing it according to procedures. The prosecution confiscated the data on the DNet server only three weeks before the indictment.

During the trial, Mr. A claimed that “the prosecution collected evidence illegally.” The first and second trials acknowledged the legality of the evidence and sentenced him guilty, saying, “It is difficult to say that the prosecution intentionally avoided the purpose of the warrant.”

However, the Supreme Court sided with Mr. A. The Supreme Court said, “After confiscating Mr. B’s cell phone, it was illegal to continue to store and investigate information unrelated to the original case (without deleting, discarding, or returning it),” and added, “It is natural that an additional warrant was issued and the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office server was seized.” “It is illegal because it targets information that should have been deleted or discarded,” he pointed out. At the same time, he said, “The data from Mr. B’s cell phone and the evidence collected based on it are all illegally collected evidence and have no evidence.”

A Supreme Court official said, “Even though new suspicions were discovered in the seized electronic information, we judged that storing it and conducting a separate investigation without going through additional procedures such as a warrant is a violation of the warrant principle,” and added, “We reaffirmed the existing legal principle that strictly required the legality of search and seizure requirements.” “I did it,” he said.

Accordingly, an official from the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office said, “The information currently stored on the server is only used to dispute the ability of evidence in trials,” and added, “Once stored on the server, access is strictly controlled so that it cannot be accessed for the purpose of investigating separate cases.”