Incheon Lawyer's Office | 20-Year-Old Client Booked on a Charge of Illegal Filming Using a Camera, Concluded with Non-prosecution

The client stated that he had repeatedly engaged in conduct such as taking photographs of the body parts of women passing on the street, checking them, and then immediately deleting them.

He said that, driven by sexual impulse, he had secretly photographed body parts, but, overcome by guilt that soon followed, he repeatedly deleted the photographs immediately without distributing or posting them.

In this case as well, while studying at a study cafe, he heard a female student's voice next to him and, feeling a sexual impulse, came to photograph body parts with his camera.

However, the victim, who had noticed the client's suspicious behavior, immediately contacted the manager to request a review of the CCTV footage and pressed the client about the criminal conduct.

Because the victim was a minor, the situation called for careful legal review and a response strategy.

The client ultimately accompanied the police voluntarily and voluntarily submitted his mobile phone, computer, USB, and other items.

At the time, he had denied everything out of fear that the charge would come to light, but he now wished to convey a sincere apology and reach a settlement with the victim.

The Incheon attorney developed a strategy to handle the settlement on the client's behalf in order to reach an amicable settlement with the victim.

<🔗Illegal filming using a camera>

① Against the will of the person filmed

② Causing sexual desire or shame

Recently, there was a case in which all evidence was rendered void and an acquittal resulted because the right to participate in a USB forensic examination was not guaranteed.

To that extent, whether the right to participate must be guaranteed when conducting a USB forensic examination has emerged as one issue.

The Incheon attorney at Daeryun Law Firm assessed the recent trends and assisted the client so that the right to participate regarding the admissibility of digital evidence could be smoothly guaranteed in this case.

① Controversy Over the Standard for the Admissibility of Digital Evidence

The perpetrator in this case was a man in his thirties, A, who was suspected of having illegally filmed photographs of the bodies and sexual encounters of his former girlfriends and having possessed them for three years.

B, one of his former girlfriends, happened to discover this and reported it to the police, and she duplicated the USB and submitted a copy, which brought the full account of the case to light.

The police who reviewed the case conducted the USB forensic examination of the device containing the criminal footage while excluding A's right to participate.

However, the evidence was regarded as illegally collected and its admissibility was denied, and accordingly, acquittals resulted in both the first and second instance judgments.

However, the position of the Supreme Court, which heard this case, was different.

The Court concluded that the actual subjects of the search and seizure of the USB copy were the victims, and that A's right to participate was unnecessary in this process.

Accordingly, the admissibility of all the evidence collected by the police was recognized, and the case was reversed and remanded.

② Confusion Over the Concept of the “Actual Subject of Search and Seizure”

There had been a precedent similar to the above case, but the outcome of the judgment was different, which gave rise to controversy over the scope of the “actual subject of search and seizure.”

<USB Precedent vs. Mobile Phone Precedent>

As different outcomes resulted in similar cases like this, even the investigators handling the cases experienced confusion.

③ Practical Problems and Confusion in Investigations

The concept of the “actual subject of search and seizure,” such as whose right to participate must be guaranteed, appears differently in each precedent.

In other words, because digital evidence can be duplicated and managed remotely, there is an ambiguous standard for guaranteeing the right to participate.

In particular, when messengers are seized, problems such as who is to be regarded as the actual subject in a group chat room that includes hundreds of people still remain unresolved.

Because, in this way, due to the nature of digital evidence, matters are being decided according to individual precedents without a consistent standard, the Incheon attorney needed to closely examine the individual precedents and cite precedents involving situations similar to the client's.