피고인의 공판정 진술과 전자문서의 진정성립

Article 313 of the Criminal Procedure Act requires two conditions of admissibility regarding testimonial documents. The first condition is a handwritten signature or stamp of the witness on the document. The second condition is that the document is authenticity acknowledged by the testimony of the witness on the trial or pre-trial day, in order to achieve the purpose of trial-centered criminal procedure. For electronic documents and its print-outs, the first condition is applied by specifying the writer who made the statement on the document. To prove that, the prosecutor may introduce the result of analysis from digital forensic experts, including electronic signature, meta-data, hash value or email account, password, etc.. However, if a defendant denies the authentication of facts related with computer technology for the electronic file or its print-out, that document is not admissible under the current law. On the contrary, if the defendant admits the fact related with computer technology for the digital evidence, it is admissible, even if he denies to have the evidence authenticated. If the defendant partly admits and partly denies the facts about computer technology, the judge will decide whether it is admissible on the basis that a fact is more important than others for identifying the author of that electronic document. For example, a fact is admissible if the defendant admits the authenticity of his/her electronic signature, even though he denies other facts, such as meta data, or internet websites. The material authentication of digital evidence means the accuracy of the computer processing, such as inputting, saving, sending, and printing. It will be easily accepted as evidence by the judge, because there is a general agreement about reliability of computer processing.