American Is Extradited to South Korea for Trial in 1997 Murder
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Version 0 of 1. SEOUL, South Korea — An American man arrived here in handcuffs on Wednesday as South Korea prepared to revisit a notorious murder case from 1997. The man, Arthur John Patterson, 35, of Sunnyvale, Calif., faces trial on charges that he murdered Jo Jung-pil, a South Korean college student, in Itaewon, an entertainment district frequented by expatriates living in Seoul. Mr. Jo, 22, was found dead on the restroom floor of a Burger King restaurant with multiple stab wounds to his neck. Mr. Patterson, 17 when the killing occurred in April 1997, was the son of an American military contractor. In South Korea, where people are sensitive about crimes committed by foreigners, especially by those connected with the United States military, the case has drawn extensive media coverage. But who killed Mr. Jo has always remained a mystery. Upon arriving at Incheon International Airport outside Seoul on Wednesday, Mr. Patterson denied killing Mr. Jo. Mr. Patterson and a Korean-American friend, Edward Lee, had said they were at the restroom when Mr. Jo was killed and accused each other of the killing. Prosecutors initially indicted Mr. Lee on a murder charge, while they treated Mr. Patterson as an accomplice and indicted him on lesser charges, including destruction of evidence. Prosecutors did not offer a motive for the killing except to say the two friends were challenging each other to kill a man with a pocketknife. In the subsequent trial, Mr. Patterson was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He was released in 1998 in an annual government amnesty. Mr. Lee was sentenced to 20 years in prison. But in 1998, in a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court, Mr. Lee was acquitted for lack of evidence. In 1999, while prosecutors were reinvestigating the case, Mr. Patterson, by then the prime suspect, left South Korea because the government had failed to renew his travel ban. The case has been remembered largely for the incompetence of the police and prosecutors handling it. The public memory was reawakened in 2009 after the release of a popular movie based on the killing, as well as local television programs that exposed the bungling of the investigation. South Korea asked the United States to extradite Mr. Patterson. In 2011, after he was detained in the United States, South Korean prosecutors formally indicted him on a murder charge. Mr. Patterson had tried to block his extradition with a habeas corpus petition in federal court in California. |