▲ Parents of a girl who died in 2019
A woman who left her 7-month-old daughter to the death of her unattended will face a heavier punishment than the sentence she was sentenced to when she was a minor as she became an adult during the trial.
The second part of the Supreme Court (Chief Justice Cho Jae-yeon) confirmed the lower court sentence of 10 years in prison for 20-year-old A, who was charged with murder and corpse abandonment.
A was handed over to trial on charges of leaving her 7-month-old daughter unattended in an apartment in Incheon for 5 days in May 2019, and so on.
Prosecutors found that A and her husband left their deceased daughter at home to bury her in the wild and did not inform the surrounding area, and also applied the charge of corpse abandonment.
They pushed each other to raise their children, met friends and drank alcohol, and did not attend their daughter's funeral, claiming that they overslept.
In the first trial held in 2019, Mr. A was sentenced to 15 years in long-term imprisonment to 7 years in short term imprisonment because he was a minor at the time of the trial.
Irregular imprisonment is a punishment that can be given to minors, and if the short-term sentence is fulfilled, the correctional authorities will evaluate them and release them before the long-term sentence is over.
At the appeals trial held the following year, when Mr. A became a 19-year-old adult, the court of appeals sentenced him to 7 years in prison, the lowest among irregular sentences.
However, the Supreme Court's all-inclusive body dismissed the case and remanded the case, saying, "The upper limit of the regular sentence that the appeals court can decide is an intermediate sentence that falls between the short-term and long-term sentences of irregular sentences."
According to the Supreme Court's decision, the remandatory trial sentenced Mr. A to 10 years in prison in consideration of the fact that Mr. A's husband was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
(Photo = Yonhap News)