Background
Late one night in pouring rain, our client struck something on the road while driving. With visibility poor in the dark and the rain, our client took it for a pile of refuse and drove on. Days later came word that the "object" had been a person crouching on the road, and that they had died.
What Was at Stake
Where a driver leaves the scene without taking action after an accident and the victim dies, the Act on the Aggravated Punishment of Specific Crimes provides for very severe punishment — life imprisonment or imprisonment of five years or more — for hit-and-run causing death. The key question was whether our client "knew they had struck a person."
How Changchun Helped
Changchun argued persuasively that our client had not perceived striking a person and had taken it for an object, drawing together the fact that the accident occurred at night in the rain with the victim crouching in the second lane, where they were hard to anticipate; the likelihood that visibility was impaired by rain glare; and the road conditions and the nature of the impact.
The prosecution issued a non-indictment decision for insufficient evidence. The case shows that the graver the charge, the more decisive it is to reconstruct the specific circumstances of the accident in detail. (Outcomes depend on the facts of each case and may differ.)