공범증인 면책제도에 대한 고찰

Witness immunity is a new strategy for defeating such special crimes as organized crime, drug cartel and corruption offence. These crimes are committed by plural persons who have a closed network, so that we can achieve great success in rooting out underlying evils with the aid of a person involved. Meanwhile, if the conspirators are not willing to talk, investigators could not help catching criminals red-handed or using highly intrusive surveillance techniques. These difficulties have designed some innovative devices for investigation, one of them is so called witness immunity. Nowadays, witness immunity is accepted as the criminal justice weapon for eradicating syndicate crimes by many advanced countries involving U.S.A., Germany, France and the United Kingdom. While U.S.A. take a step forward by implementing crime immunity, France and Germany assume a relatively prudent attitude to remain in punishment immunity. The United Kingdom is the forefront nation that equips itself with not only crime immunity but also punishment immunity. This paper offers the introduction witness immunity into South Korean criminal justice system, and designs the concrete proposal as follows. Firstly, the target shall be clearly and limitedly made such as organized crime, drug cartel and corruption offence. Secondly, the methods of immunity had better consist of crime immunity and punishment immunity, while evidence use immunity is recommended as the method of punishment immunity rather than transactional immunity. Thirdly, witness immunity shall be implemented by the prosecutors with the approval of judges. Lastly, we also need to make a full defensive preparation to minimize the side effects of witness immunity, the one of which is the new legislation to punish the obstructor of justice.