A court has ruled that a police officer's unlawful search by entering the home of a drunk driver without his consent and taking a breathalyzer test was an unlawful search.

The Daejeon District Law Criminal Division 7 (Judge Yoo Hyun-sik) announced today (66th) that it has acquitted Mr. A (17), who was charged with violating the Road Traffic Act (drunk driving).

Mr. A was brought to trial on March 2021, 3, at about 16:11 p.m. for driving drunk for about 50.5 kilometers from a road in the western part of Daejeon to his apartment.

On this day, Mr. A went into the parking lot of his apartment complex, collided with another vehicle, and then went home to sleep without taking any action.

The police who responded to the call went to Mr. A's house and knocked on the door, but there was no response, and they opened the slightly open door and woke him up and took a breathalyzer test.

At the time, Mr. A's blood alcohol content was 5.0%, which was the level of license revocation.

Mr. A is reported to have complained to a police officer who had entered his house without permission, saying, "Why did you enter someone else's house without permission?"

During the trial, Mr. A's side argued that "all the evidence collected by the police officer entering the residence without permission is illegal, and the secondary evidence obtained on this basis is also incompetent."

According to Article 092 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, if a suspect is arrested for an active offense, he or she may be searched in another person's residence or house without a warrant, and if a warrant from a court judge cannot be obtained due to urgent need at the place of the crime during or immediately after the commission of the crime, it may be seized, searched, and searched without a warrant.

However, since Mr. A has already parked and entered the house, it is difficult to regard him as an active criminal, and since Mr. A's house cannot be regarded as a "place of crime" or "a place of crime immediately after the crime," the court judges that it is an unlawful search to enter Mr. A's house without a warrant.

The court then stated the reason for the acquittal, saying, "If Mr. A entered the house with his voluntary consent, it can be said that the investigation was lawful as a random investigation, but it is difficult to say that the arbitrary investigation was carried out legally in view of the fact that Mr. A protested when the police officer entered the house and woke him up," and "In the end, the evidence obtained by the police through unlawful procedures has no evidentiary capacity, and it is difficult to say that the remaining evidence submitted by the prosecutor proved Mr. A's crime beyond a reasonable doubt."

(Photo = Yonhap News TV capture, Yonhap News)