Has Rama X revived Thailand’s death penalty?

When Thailand announced on Monday night that it had carried out its first execution in nine years, the news was met with shock. The country had refrained from imposing the death penalty since the lethal injection of two drug dealers in 2009. It had also repeatedly pledged to look into ditching capital punishment altogether.

That changed on the night of 19 June 2018, when the Corrections Department said it had sent a 26-year-old man convicted of aggravated murder to the lethal injection chamber.

What’s puzzling is the authorities’ refusal to discuss or explain the question of why him—and why now? As any journalist working in Thailand would tell you: once Thai bureaucrats keep mum about certain questions, it’s time to raise the alarm.

Behind this surprising turn of events—which has virtually gone unreported by the media—is King Vajiralongkorn’s apparent refusal to grant the condemned man a royal pardon and stay his execution. This is a significant departure from his late father’s longstanding practice of allowing death-row prisoners to live.

Under Thai law, even after the Supreme Court has handed down a death sentence, it can be overturned by His Majesty the King if a petition is filed to the palace within 60 days. The king can then deliberate on the petition as long as he wishes.

It was under this mechanism that King Bhumibol, who died in October 2016, effectively stopped Thailand from carrying out the death penalty for nearly a decade. Petitions submitted by condemned prisoners were left unanswered by the palace, leading prison officials to treat them as a matter “under royal deliberation”. They refrained from putting the petitioners to death, lest they were seen as intruding on royal authority. More than 500 death-row inmates continue to live indefinitely because of this inaction.

It’s unclear why King Bhumibol left the petitions unanswered during the last decade of his life. Maybe he personally didn’t believe in the death penalty. Maybe he didn’t want to interfere with the justice system. Or maybe he was simply too unwell to give them a thought—his ailing health took a steady downturn after 2009.

His successor seems to be taking a different route. There are strong indications that Teerasak Longji submitted a petition, but unlike those condemned before him, his plea for clemency was rejected by His Majesty the King.

Teerasak’s family has confirmed this, albeit indirectly. In a tearful interview with reporters, Teerasak’s sister told them she was only informed of the execution after he was put to death. According to her, Teerasak wrote to his family as late as 31 May and expressed his hope that he would be allowed to live and reform himself.

“He still didn’t know he would be executed, and he still said he wanted to turn his life around and return to society as a good person,” Chutamas Longji said of her late brother on 19 June.

The Supreme Court had already sentenced Teerasak to death. Why did he hope the penalty would change? It could only be because he had filed for royal clemency.

The fact that Teerasak’s family didn’t know the execution date is itself telling. If Teerasak had declined to submit a petition, he would have known—and his family would have known—that the execution would come once the 60 days after the Supreme Court’s verdict had passed.

In contrast, when royal petitions are rejected, the prisoner must be put to death within 24 hours. Informing relatives would not be a priority for prison officials.

An example of this protocol was the infamous execution of three men accused of assassinating the young Rama VIII in 1946. Their petitions were rejected by Rama IX on 17 February 1955 and they were promptly put in front of the firing squad the next day.

Even without the clue provided by Teerasak’s sister, prison officials would have been extremely reluctant to dare carry out Thailand’s first execution in 9 years without first consulting the legal system’s final authority: the king himself.

King Vajiralongkorn’s seeming refusal to pardon Teerasak, or even tacitly allow him to live, could have far-reaching implications. What will happen to the 517 death-row inmates whose fates currently hinge on the King’s mercy?

Source: New Mandala, Anonymous, June 22, 2018.The author, a Thai journalist, has requested anonymity.

Thailand: Shocking resumption of the death penalty condemned

(Bangkok, Paris) Thailand’s resumption of executions is an affront to human rights and a betrayal of its numerous commitments towards abolition, FIDH and its member organization Union for Civil Liberty (UCL) said today.

According to Thailand’s Department of Corrections under the Ministry of Justice, between 3pm and 6pm today, Theerasak Longji, 26, was executed by lethal injection at an unspecified location. Mr. Theerasak was found guilty of a premeditated murder he had committed in Trang on 17 July 2012.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms Thailand’s resumption of the death penalty. Today’s execution is inexplicable, unjustified, and contradicts the numerous commitments Thailand has made at the national and international level towards the abolition of the death penalty.” -- Debbie Stothard, FIDH Secretary-General

Prior to today, Thailand’s last execution was carried out on 24 August 2009, when two men, Bundit Jaroenwanit, 45, and Jirawat Poompreuk, 52, were put to death by lethal injection with just one-hour’s notice at Bang Khwang Prison, located just north of Bangkok. The two had been convicted of drug trafficking on 29 March 2001. Thailand would have achieved the status of de facto abolitionist, had it not carried out any executions before 24 August 2019.

“Today marks the latest unenviable achievement for Thailand under the rule of the military junta. The hurried resumption of executions after almost nine years shows that complete abolition is never achieved while capital punishment remains on the books.” -- Danthong Breen, UCL Senior Advisor

The Department of Correction’s announcement of Mr. Theerasak’s execution justified the resumption of the death penalty by grouping Thailand with the United States and China (the world’s top executioner) as countries that focus on “protecting society and the general public from crimes more than focusing on the rights and freedoms of wrongdoers.”

As of April 2018, there were 517 prisoners (415 men and 102 women) under death sentence in Thailand. Forty-eight percent of the men and 93% percent of the women were sentenced to death for drug-related offenses.

FIDH and UCL urge Thailand to immediately halt all executions, announce an official moratorium on capital punishment, sign and ratify the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, and vote in favor of a resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions at the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in December 2018.

FIDH, a member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP), and UCL reiterate their strong opposition to the death penalty for all crimes and in all circumstances.

Source: FIDH, June 18, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog