우리나라 양형위원회 양형기준모델의 타당성 평가

In order to reflect the general public's sound common sense in setting sentencing and to realize fair and objective sentencing that the people could trust, the Supreme Court provided groundwork regulations for the Sentencing Committee in the 2007 Supreme Court Organizational Act. The first committee held in May 7, 2009 proclaimed sentencing guideline for eight major crimes - murder, bribery, sex crimes, robbery, embezzlement, malpractice, perjury, and false incrimination. These guideline will be applied to criminal cases beginning in July of 2009. Establishment of such sentencing guideline not only relieves inequities in sentencing terms but also allows for the people to observe the process of establishing sentencing terms, thereby promoting the realization of justice in criminal law. Therefore, this will allow for a thorough examination of the characteristics of our sentencing standard, processes of determining sentencing terms, and elements of sentencing. In light of the fact that the Citizen Criminal Trial Participation Act, Article 46, Section 4 states “When the jury delivers the verdict of guilty the jury must discuss sentencing with the judge and make statements to that effect.”, such research will be highly beneficial in providing grounds that ensure the jury to make consistent and appropriate decisions. Accordingly, the focus of the discussion on rationalizing sentencing must transcend the phase of judicial rationalization and expand into a more detailed deliberation on establishing a model of specific sentencing guideline that is, a logical validation of sentencing terms that can be used to derive specific sentencing terms. Therefore, as the objective, the present study aims to identify limitations of the current sentencing guideline proposed by the Sentencing Committee and to propose suggestions for improvement.