A man from South Korea receives $2.2 million after spending 20 years in prison for a wrongful murder conviction.
Urged to compensate after wrongfully convicted of murder
A 53-year-old man will earn W2.5 billion ($2.2 million) in compensation after spending 20 years in jail for the death of a woman who was actually the victim of a suspected serial killer. Yoon Sung-yeo, who was wrongfully guilty of the murder of serial killer Lee Chun-eighth Jae's victim. Lee was sentenced to life in jail in 1990 and completed his sentence before confessing to his crimes last year after DNA evidence pointed to him.
Yoon sued the state in January, seeking compensation, and the court granted him the full amount he requested, Chosun reported. According to a court source, the decision took into account the form of detention and extent, damages suffered due to imprisonment, and psychological distress.
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Yoon's missed basic daily salary was then measured using the 2020 minimum wage of W68,720. Compensation is limited to five times the minimum monthly wage or W343,600. The number was also compounded by Yoon's time in prison, which was 7,326 days.
The court made its ruling on March 5, but Yoon would have to wait longer to collect the money. Yoon also seeks to sue the National Forensic Service and the police for wrongdoings in the investigation of him and the state for the psychological harm his relatives suffered as a result of his arrest.
Yoon Sung-yeo was sentenced to life in jail in South Korea for an offense he did not commit. Since a suspected serial killer confessed last year, he was able to clear his name.
The acquitted man, was sentenced to life in prison in 1989 for the murder of a young girl in Hwaseong, a county south of Seoul, the previous year. According to the New York Times, Mr. Yoon was incarcerated for two decades before being released on parole in 2009.
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He would have served the remainder of his days as a convicted criminal if it hadn't been for a stunning twist in South Korea's longest unsolved serial murder incident. Last year, police revealed that a man serving a life sentence for raping and murdering his sister-in-law in 1994 had confessed in the so-called Hwaseong serial killings, in which ten women were brutally murdered across the county from 1986 to 1991.
Lee Chun-Jae, the confessed serial murderer, has admitted to killing four other people, including a 13-year-old teen. Mr. Yoon demanded a fresh trial right away. "It was a false verdict based on wrong investigations," Park Jeong-Jae, a district court judge in Suwon, south of Seoul, said in his ruling on Mr. Yoon's case on Thursday.
Yoon's fans burst into applause and greeted him with flowers as the decision was confirmed. Prosecutors took the decision not to file an appeal. The Hwaseong murders terrorized South Koreans for decades. After being raped, the women, ranging in age from 7 to 71, were often strangled to death.
Their mouths had been stuffed with their own stockings, bras, or socks before their bodies were discovered. Umbrellas, forks, and shaving blades were used to mistreat some of the bodies.
Over the years, more than 21,000 men were interrogated in the hunt for the killer, which involved two million police officers. The murders were also the inspiration for the 2003 blockbuster film "Memories of Murder."
When advances in DNA analysis allowed forensic experts to extract samples from some of the evidence collected at the crime scenes, the cases remained unsolved until last year. Mr. Lee's DNA was found in the samples, and he later confessed to the murders.
According to one of the former police detectives who investigated his case during his retrial, Mr. Yoon was beaten and deprived of sleep for three days as he was forced into a confession. The court said that the case against Mr. Yoon was based on illegal detention and torture and no reliable evidence.
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