You may remember the case of a bus driver sentenced to prison time for forcibly restraining a man from sexually assaulting one of his passengers and then assaulting a teacher’s aide. He managed to get a partial victory on appeal.

It’s unclear whether excessive force was used, but if not then this is really one of those cases that makes you wonder where the prosecutor’s head is at.

A bus driver who was sentenced to prison time for causing an injury while stopping an act of sexual molestation occurring on the bus has received a reduction in sentence on appeal.

Judge Lee Sang-hun of the Seoul Central Courts’ 9th criminal division overturned the trial court’s sentence of sentenced the bus driver, “A”, to probation and instead imposed a fine of one million won (US$900) for inflicting injury while preventing the incident on the bus.

The judge ruled that “although he struck the other person in the eye with his fist, it came in the mitigating circumstance of occurring accidentally in the course of preventing a wrong… in consideration of the method and the result, the trial court’s imposition of prison time is too heavy a punishment.”

In May of last year Mr. A, who is a bus driver for a school for the disabled, inflicted six injuries, including a bone fracture, after punching the left eye of 18-year old “B”, a disabled student on the bus going to school, and was indicted in October of the same year.

At the time B was continuously sexually molesting a female student seated across from him, and the bus aide, 51-year old Mrs. “C”, moved the female student to another seat. Enraged, B suddenly attacked her and knocked her to the floor.

Mr. A then stopped the bus and stopped B, leading to a physical altercation in which B was injured.

The trial judge sentenced him to six months in prison and two years of probation, saying that “although there are mitigating circumstances the victim was badly injured and no settlement has been reached with his family.”