According to the legal community on the 21st, Kim’s attorney submitted a written request and an opinion statement to the Busan District Court’s Criminal Division 7, headed by Presiding Judge Lim Ju-hyeok. The panel is reviewing whether to hold the case as a jury trial or to exclude it as inappropriate.
South Korea introduced the jury trial system in 2008. Citizens age 20 and older may serve as jurors in criminal cases, delivering a verdict and discussing an appropriate sentence. The system applies to cases under a district court panel when a defendant requests it, and the jury’s decision is advisory.
Kim was indicted on charges that he stabbed to death an airline captain, identified as A, at about 5:30 a.m. on March 17 at an apartment in Busan’s Busanjin district.
Investigators said Kim had gone the day before to the home of another colleague, identified as B, an airline captain living in Goyang, Gyeonggi province, intending to kill him, but failed and fled.
After that attempt, authorities said, Kim went to Changwon, South Gyeongsang province, and tried to kill another former co-worker, identified as C, but that attack also failed.
Kim, a former Air Force intelligence officer, is believed to have targeted the victims because he thought they — fellow graduates of the Korea Air Force Academy — had organized efforts at work to undermine him or cause him harm.
When he was transferred to prosecutors, Kim told reporters, “Vicious vested interests” had shown “hubris” by thinking they could ruin a person’s life, and that “nemesis” had struck. His request for a jury trial is seen as an effort to appeal to jurors that he was wronged.
Kim is reported to have been assigned a court-appointed lawyer. His first hearing is scheduled for May 19.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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