A South Korean court on Friday sentenced former South Korean President Park Geun-hye to an additional eight years for abusing state funds and violating election laws.
She now faces the prospect of more than three decades behind bars. She's already serving a 24-year prison term over a massive corruption scandal that led to her removal from office last year.
In this Aug. 7, 2017, file photo, former South Korean President Park Geun-hye, left, arrives for her trial at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon, File)
Seoul Central District Court on Friday found her guilty of causing substantial losses to state coffers by unlawfully receiving about 3 billion won ($2.6 million) from chiefs of the National Intelligence Service during her presidency and sentenced her to six years in prison.
However, she was found not guilty of bribery charges related to the money transfers. The court said it was unclear whether the spy chiefs sought or received favors in return.
The court separately sentenced Park to two years in prison for breaking election laws by meddling in her party candidate's nomination while attempting to win more spots for her loyalists ahead of the parliamentary elections in 2016.
She didn't appear in court.
Park's conservative party failed to gain a majority in the National Assembly after the parliamentary vote in April 2016. Analysts then said voters were frustrated over what they saw as Park's heavy-handed and uncompromising leadership style and inability to tolerate dissent within her party, which triggered rifts between her loyalists and reformists.
The party's defeat loomed large months later in December when an opposition-controlled parliament suspended Park's powers by passing a bill on her impeachment. Millions of protesters had poured onto the streets calling for Park's ouster amid allegations that she colluded with a longtime confidant to take tens of millions of dollars from companies in bribes and extortion and allowed the friend to secretly manipulate state affairs. The court convicted Park on most of these charges when it sentenced her to 24 years in prison in April.
The ruling marked a stunning fall from grace for the country's first female leader who won the 2012 presidential election by more than a million votes. Park enjoyed overwhelming support from conservatives who remember her father, staunch anti-communist dictator Park Chung-hee, as a hero whose aggressive industrial policies lifted the nation from the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War and rescued millions from poverty. Critics see the elder Park as a brutal dictator who tortured and executed dissidents.
While Park's prison term currently adds up to 32 years, this could change, and potentially get even longer, depending on rulings of appeals courts. Prosecutors appealed Park's 24-year term on charges including bribery and abuse of state power and are now demanding 30 years in prison. The Seoul High Court will rule on the case on Aug. 24.
Following her impeachment, Park was formally removed from office following a ruling by the country's Constitutional Court in March last year and was arrested weeks later.
MARCY, N.Y. (AP) — A New York prison where an man was beaten by correctional officers and then died will get a new superintendent, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday after visiting the facility.
Body camera video had been released days earlier showing officers punching Robert Brooks while he was handcuffed on a medical examination table at Marcy Correctional Facility on Dec. 9. He was pronounced dead the following morning.
The governor has already moved to terminate 13 officers and a nurse implicated in the attack on the incarcerated man. State Attorney General Letitia James is investigating the officers' use of force.
The FBI and U.S. Department of Justice are also reviewing the death but declined to comment further, the FBI said in a statement.
Hochul traveled to the facility in central New York on Monday to meet with corrections department leadership and people incarcerated at the prison.
“The system failed Mr. Brooks and I will not be satisfied until there has been significant culture change," she said in a statement.
She said Shawangunk Correctional Facility Superintendent Bennie Thorpe would be named the new superintendent of Marcy Correctional Facility. Thorpe has more than two decades of experience in corrections but has never served at Marcy, “giving him expertise and a fresh perspective on what must be done," Hochul's office said in the statement.
In addition, the governor said she would add staffers to the state corrections department's special investigation office to handle complaints and direct the agency to hire an outside firm to review the culture, patterns and practices throughout the entire correctional system.
Hochul said corrections department leadership has already expanded a policy requiring staff to activate body cameras whenever they come into contact with incarcerated people.
“Today, as I stood in the room where Robert Brooks was killed, I was once again heartbroken by this unnecessary loss of life and further sickened to think of the actions of depraved individuals with no regard for human life,” Hochul said. “Mr. Brooks and his family did not deserve this.”
Body camera footage released last week shows correctional officers punching Brooks in the face, groin and body while he was handcuffed and sitting on a medical examination table. At one point, an officer picks Brooks up by his neck and drops him on the table as another officer hits him in the body with a shoe.
The final results of Brooks' autopsy are still pending. Preliminary findings from a medical examination indicate “concern for asphyxia due to compression of the neck as the cause of death, as well as the death being due to actions of another,” according to court filings.
Brooks was serving a 12-year prison sentence for first-degree assault since 2017. He arrived at the Marcy Correctional Facility hours before the beating, after being transferred from another nearby state prison, officials said.
FILE - This image provided by the New York State Attorney General office shows bodycam footage of correction officers beating a handcuffed man, Robert Brooks, 43, at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County, N.Y., on Dec. 9, 2024. (New York State Attorney General office via AP, File)
