공판중심주의 관점에서 본 증거법의 바람직한 운용방안

This study examines the meaning and values of the principle of court-oriented trialsthat has been adopted as one of the basic principles in Korean criminal evidence law. The principle of court-oriented trials means that the criminal fact finding should bebased on the debate between two parties, the prosecutor and the defendant and his/herdefender, and the result of the examination of evidences such as the result of thewitness testimonies which go through the thorough verification by examination andcross-examination in an open courtroom. Also in terms of the evidence law, it iscombined with the hearsay rule that any document which contains a statement inplace of the statement made at preparatory hearing or during public trial, or anystatement that import of which is another person's statement made outside preparatoryhearing or at the time other than the public trial date, shall not be admitted asevidence of guilty. The principle has not been realized sufficiently in the practice of criminal trial. Korean prosecutors kept making efforts to include self-incriminating statements of thesuspects in their interrogation dossiers and argued that the dossiers should beadmissible without cross-examination in the court even if they have been made withoutthe presence of the defense attorney. It was extremely difficult for the defendants toescape from a guilty judgement in a trial once they have made self-incriminatingstatements in front of prosecutors. The phenomenon that truth-finding heavily depends on the interrogation dossiers submitted by prosecutor, not on the cross-examinations bythe parties in a courtroom has been criticised as 'dossier-oriented trial' in Korea. This article reviews the meaning and the value of the court-oriented trials in Koreancriminal trials and seeks the desirable direction of interpreting application of theevidence rules of the Korean Criminal Procedure Code. Particularly, this articleanalyzes admissibility of interrogation dossiers, videotape recorded during interrogations, and testimony of investigator that are leading hearsay evidences.