Death Penalty - Facts from Figures

Prisoners Sentenced to Death in Thailand: December 2012

   (Figures for June 2012 shown in brackets)

All Cases

Gender	Appeal Court	Supreme Court	Convicted	Total
Male	350 (328)	214 (274)	27 (52)	591 (634)
Female	58 (55)	9 (11)	0 (6)	67 (72)
Total	408 (383)	223 (285)	27 (58)	658 (726)

Narcotics

Gender	Appeal Court	Supreme Court	Convicted	Total
Male	183 (156)	78 (89)	8 (31)	269 (276)
Female	48 (45)	8 (10)	0 (6)	56 (61)
Total	231 (201)	86 (99)	8 (37)	325 (337)

Homicide

Gender	Appeal Court	Supreme Court	Convicted	Total
Male	167 (172)	136 (185)	19 (21)	322 (378)
Female	10 (10)	1 (1)	0 (0)	11 (11)
Total	177 (182)	137 (186)	19 (21)	333 (389)

Comments: The differences for the statistics for June and December reveal the important impact of the Royal Pardon granted on 11^th August, on occasion of the birthdays of Her Majesty the Queen, and the Crown Prince. As shown in the top “All Cases” category, in June, there were 58 prisoners for whom all legal process was completed. Following the pardon this number was reduced to zero. I confirmed this with a prison warder who assured me, referring to the number of prisoners facing possible execution, that there were no prisoners on death row, although it took almost three months to complete the formality of moving them to non-death penalty quarters, and removing the shackles, compulsory for death row prisoners. The number of female prisoners changed from 6 to 0 in August. There are no further completed convictions of women so that the figure remains 0 in December.

However, the number of convicted prisoners is now 27; these are cases where the death penalty has been confirmed by the Supreme Court, the only avenue by which these cases could have reached completion. At least some of these cases are due to convictions in the Southern Border Provinces, the source of most death sentences at present. The validity of death sentences coming from areas under martial law deserve investigation.

A further interesting observation may be made on the number of cases reaching the Appeal Court. These are cases which result from death sentences in the Courts of First Instance. Here we notice an increase of  408 – 383 = 25 over the June figure, which indicates a minimum number of new death sentences. It is a minimum because an unknown number of the cases before the Appeal Court may already have been removed due to dismissal or confirmation by that Court, removing them from the category of cases before the Appeal Court. Thus we know of at least 25 new death sentences over a six month period, which indicates an annual rate of death sentences of 50. UCL and other Thai human rights organizations have been reporting figures in this range over recent years. We obtained the data from the Department of Corrections, which does not itself publish this statistic. However, major databases of worldwide death penalty figures based in the UK and US have been quoting single digit figures for the annual rate of death sentences in Thailand, probably basing their data on sentences reported only in the English language press. Commentators have used the single digit figures to comment favourably on the decline in use of the death penalty in Thai justice. Sad to say, the death penalty is still being applied at an average rate of one per week. Pressure on prison accommodation is probably a factor in the attempts of some politicians and government officials to accelerate executions. For the moment they may be restrained by appearing to counter the Royal intention shown in the recent pardon. But for how long? It is encouraging that despite the statements of the promoters of the death penalty that those convicted on drug charges would not be pardoned, they have indeed been pardoned.