South Korea's Supreme Court has reaffirmed that courts cannot order a defendant to complete a drug addiction rehabilitation program if the person did not personally use the narcotics, even when they received or passed them on.
The Supreme Court's third division, presided over by Justice Oh Suk-jun, recently struck down on its own authority the rehabilitation program requirement from a lower court ruling that had sentenced a defendant identified as A to one year in prison and 40 hours of a rehabilitation program for violating the Narcotics Control Act, legal sources said on the 20th. The court upheld the remainder of the ruling by dismissing the appeal.
A was indicted on charges of receiving about 0.14 grams of methamphetamine free of charge from another person in a hotel room in Incheon in the early hours of April 30 last year. A also faced charges of posting "a drink" — slang for methamphetamine — on a chat application message board on Feb. 24 of the same year, thereby disseminating information about methamphetamine use to an unspecified number of people. Investigators found that A had committed the offenses shortly after a suspended prison sentence for a similar crime became final. Twenty-eight syringes were found in A's car, residence and clothing.
The trial and appellate courts sentenced A to one year in prison, ordered the forfeiture of 200,000 won and required 40 hours of a drug addiction rehabilitation program.
The Supreme Court left the prison term intact. But it found a misapplication of the law in the rehabilitation order and corrected it on its own initiative.
Article 40-2, Paragraph 1 of the Narcotics Control Act defines a "narcotics offender" as a person who has injected, smoked or ingested narcotics. Paragraph 2 of the same article requires courts, absent special circumstances, to impose an attendance order or a rehabilitation program requirement of up to 200 hours when convicting a narcotics offender.
The charges against A, however, covered only receiving methamphetamine and relaying information about its use to others, and did not include allegations that A personally injected, smoked or ingested the drug.
"Unless the defendant has been indicted for injecting, smoking or ingesting narcotics, the defendant does not qualify as a 'narcotics offender' as defined under Article 40-2, Paragraph 1 of the Narcotics Control Act," the Supreme Court said. It therefore concluded that a program requirement under Paragraph 2 of the same article could not be imposed on A.