Man in His 30s Who Mistakenly Entered a Hotel Room in His Underwear... Prosecution Issues Non-Indictment for "No Intent"

Confused the floor while heavily intoxicated... intent to trespass not recognized after analyzing CCTV and movements

A man in his 30s who was under investigation on charges of mistakenly entering another guest's hotel room in his underwear received a non-indictment disposition from the prosecution. The prosecution judged it difficult to recognize the intent to trespass, viewing that he had mistaken his own room while heavily intoxicated.

On the 31st, according to the legal community, the Seoul Western District Prosecutors' Office on the 14th of last month issued a no-suspicion disposition against Mr. A (in his 30s), who had been suspected of trespassing, on the grounds of insufficient evidence.

Mr. A was accused of entering a room where another guest was staying at a hotel in Seoul in March. At the time, the room's entrance door was found to have been open.

Mr. A denied the charges. He said that on the day of the incident, after drinking with a friend, he went outside the hotel to smoke a cigarette while heavily intoxicated, and on his way back, he got off on a different floor than the one he was staying on and mistook the room in the same position for his own.

The prosecution accepted this account. It judged there was sufficient room to view that Mr. A, without realizing he had gotten off on a different floor, entered the room in the same position as the room he was staying in.

It also found it difficult to conclude that he had recognized it as another person's room and deliberately trespassed, considering that Mr. A was wearing only underwear to sleep at the time of the incident and the characteristics of a hotel as an unfamiliar space.

Choi Sung-moon, the Daeryun LLC attorney who represented Mr. A, explained, "The crime of trespassing is not established simply by the fact of entering another person's dwelling; the intent to infringe upon it while recognizing that the place is another person's dwelling must be recognized."

He added, "We objectively demonstrated that it is difficult to recognize the intent to trespass by comprehensively analyzing the circumstances in which the client, while heavily intoxicated, mistook a room on a different floor in the same position for his own, the movement path before and after the incident, call records, CCTV, and the hotel's room layout by floor."

Reporter Hwang Jung-won (garden@sidae.com)

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Man in His 30s Who Mistakenly Entered a Hotel Room in His Underwear... Prosecution Issues Non-Indictment for "No Intent" (Go to Link)