Abstract

As modern society become more complicated and science are developing, proper and timely dispute resolutions are demanded for specialized litigations such as construction litigation, health care litigation, and intellectual property litigation. Full trial of such litigations are demanded as well. However, it is difficult to have expertise and experience in all area of litigation by judges in reality. For that reason, the court indicates experts for the related area to obtain their specialized knowledge and experience which is called expert commissioner system. In this study, literature research has been performed to understand the influence of professional opinion on sentencing in real criminal cases by judges after introducing psychology area out of expert commissioner system in criminal justice in Korea. First, introduction of expert commissioner system and related official regulation has been studied. In addition similar systems from other countries have been studied and psychological assessment tools have been introduced to explain psychological explanation by expert commissioner system in Korea. Several cases have been reviewed to understand influence of psychological explanation from the cases which expert commissioner system was applied on assessment of cases by judges. As a result, request of psychological explanation by expert commissioner system have been increased during year 2008 when first time the system has been introduced and 2009, but the request has been plunged in year 2010. Even if the cases apply this system, no psychological explanation was recorded for the reason of sentencing by judicial decision. Therefore, it is impossible to detect whether psychological explanation by expert commissioner system has effect on sentencing or not. Consequently, judges still have some freedom of sentencing even if psychological explanation by expert commissioner system has been requested still after expert commissioner system has been introduced to offer objective standard for sentencing by presenting professional knowledge and interpretation.