Supreme Court upholds life sentence given to wife who drowned husband for insurance money
![The Supreme Court upheld the life imprisonment sentence given to 32-year-old Lee Eun-hae, left, and a 30-year sentence given to Lee's accomplice Cho Hyeon-soo, 31, on Thursday. [INCHEON DISTRICT PROSECUTORS' OFFICE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2023/09/21/dfb873e7-d12e-4d00-a8b7-5597f501636a.jpg)
The Supreme Court upheld the life imprisonment sentence given to 32-year-old Lee Eun-hae, left, and a 30-year sentence given to Lee's accomplice Cho Hyeon-soo, 31, on Thursday. [INCHEON DISTRICT PROSECUTORS' OFFICE]
Lee killed her husband in 2019 to claim a life insurance payout.
The court also upheld the earlier court’s 30-year sentence given to 31-year-old Cho Hyeon-soo, an accomplice with whom Lee had an affair.
Lee and Cho were accused of drowning Lee’s 39-year-old husband, surnamed Yoon, in June 2019 at a stream in Gapyeong County, Gyeonggi, just four hours before his life insurance expired.
They had told Yoon, who did not know how to swim, to jump into the water from a 4-meter-high cliff.
The lower courts did not misinterpret the legal principles of murder by commission and murder by omission, the high court said in its ruling.
In other words, it acknowledged that Lee killed her husband by not saving him from drowning but did not find her guilty of murdering her husband by commission by gaslighting him, which the prosecution indicted her with in May last year.
The penalty for murder by commission is typically harsher than murder by omission.
The Supreme Court also upheld the ruling on Lee and Cho’s attempted murder of Yoon in February and May 2019 by poisoning his food and pushing him into the water at a fishery, respectively.
BY SOHN DONG-JOO [sohn.dongjoo@joongang.co.kr]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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