‘검사의 수사개시 범죄 범위에 관한 규정’의 적법성 검토

Abstract

Article 4 of the Prosecutor’s Office Act of 2020 provided that a prosecutor may commence an investigation for significant crimes prescribed by Presidential Decree, such as corruption, economic crimes, crimes of public officials, election crimes, defense industry crimes, and catastrophes. The National Assembly revised the article in May of 2022 providing that a prosecutor may commence an investigation for significant crimes prescribed by Presidential Decree, such as corruption and economic crimes, which was revised to reduce the scope of crime investigation initiated by a prosecutor. Thereafter, Ministry of Justice published Amendment to Presidential Decree according to the Prosecutor’s Office Act of 2022.
 This article reviewed on the legality of the amendment and concluded as follows. The revision unjustifiably extended the scope of crimes that prosecutors may commence by adding such crimes as were excluded from the list in the Act of 2022, obstruction of justice or the crimes must be reported to a prosecutor by a related authority under individual statutes. This paper also argues that the definition of ‘directly related crimes’ referred to a prosecutor by a judicial police officer is unreasonably excluded, which may include all the crimes that a prosecutor may see proper to investigate without a relevant guideline for the prosecutor to follow. Therefore, this paper concludes that the amendment deviates limit of delegated legislation of the Prosecutor’s Office Act of 2022.