News: Judge’s Protest by Attempted Suicide Shakes Judicial Authority

YALA — Thailand’s courts find themselves under intense scrutiny Friday after a judge shot himself to protest alleged interference in a trial that would have sent five men to death row.

Yala senior judge Khanakorn Pianchana pulled out a handgun and shot himself in the chest inside a courtroom moments after he acquitted five defendants of murder and firearm charges. In a court filing leaked on social media after his suicide attempt, Khanakorn said he was pressured by his supervisor to find the men guilty despite lack of evidence. 

Khanakorn’s statements were written inside a full court verdict, which is typically released to the press after a ruling. 

The judge said he was threatened by regional justice chief Permsak Saisrithong to deliver a guilty verdict on the five defendants, or Khanakorn himself would be placed under a disciplinary hearing if he disobeys. 

Khanakorn said he could not bring himself to condemn the men due to lack of hard evidence. If found guilty, the defendants would have faced death penalty. 

Source: Khaosode, Teeranai Charuvastra, Staff Reporter.

Pro bono

Pro bono publico (English: for the public good; usually shortened to pro bono) is a Latin phrase for professional work undertaken voluntarily and without payment. Unlike traditional volunteerism, it is service that uses the specific skills of professionals to provide services to those who are unable to afford them.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org

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Guilt

"Guilt" is the obligation of a person who has violated a moral standard to bear the sanctions imposed by that moral standard. In legal terms, guilt means having been found to have violated a criminal law, though law also raises 'the issue of defences, pleas, the mitigation of offences, and the defeasibility of claims'.

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org

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Natural Law

Natural law (Latin: ius naturale, lex naturalis) is a philosophy asserting that certain rights are inherent by virtue of human nature, endowed by nature—traditionally by God or a transcendent source—and that these can be understood universally through human reason. As determined by nature, the law of nature is implied to be objective and universal; it exists independently of human understanding, and of the positive law of a given state, political order, legislature or society at large.

Historically, natural law refers to the use of reason to analyze human nature to deduce binding rules of moral behavior from nature's or God's creation of reality and mankind. The concept of natural law was documented in ancient Greek philosophy, including Aristotle, and was referred to in Roman philosophy by Cicero. References to natural law are also found in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, later expounded upon in the Middle Ages by Christian philosophers such as Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas. The School of Salamanca made notable contributions during the Renaissance. Modern natural law theories were greatly developed in the Age of Enlightenment, combining inspiration from Roman law with philosophies like social contract theory. Key proponents were Alberico Gentili, Francisco Suárez, Richard Hooker, Thomas Hobbes, Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf, Matthew Hale, John Locke, Francis Hutcheson, Jean Jacques Burlamaqui, Emmerich de Vattel, Cesare Beccaria and Francesco Mario Pagano. It was used to challenge the divine right of kings, and became an alternative justification for the establishment of a social contract, positive law, and government—and thus legal rights—in the form of classical republicanism. Conversely, the concept of natural rights is used by others to challenge the legitimacy of all such establishments.

Contemporarily, the concept of natural law is closely related to the concept of natural rights. Indeed, many philosophers, jurists and scholars use natural law synonymously with natural rights (Latin: ius naturale), or natural justice. while others distinguish between natural law and natural right.

Because of the intersection between natural law and natural rights, natural law has been claimed or attributed as a key component in the United States Declaration of Independence (1776), the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) of France, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) of the United Nations General Assembly, as well as the European Convention on Human Rights (1953) of the Council of Europe.

Source:  https://en.m.wikipedia.org

News: Judge shoots self in court after being forced to change verdict

A judge, Mr. Kanakorn Pianchana, shot himself in the chest in an apparent suicide attempt after delivering a verdict in Yala’s provincial court this afternoon (Friday).

Spokesman for the court said that Mr. Kanakorn is now out of danger after being rushed to the provincial hospital, adding that the judge might be suffering from stress.

A statement, purportedly written by Mr. Kanakorn, has been widely shared on social media and claims that he had been approached by someone who forced him to change the not guilty verdicts against five defendants, condemning three of them to death and sending another two to prison, despite the lack of sufficient evidence to convict any of them.

The judge claims that other junior judges in the court of first instance, like him, are also subjected to the same pressure.

He complained about the unfair treatment of judges in the court of first instance, such as working after office hours to write the verdicts without overtime pay and being forbidden from working in a second job to earn extra income, unlike doctors who can work at their own clinics after finishing their work in hospitals.

In the statement, the judge also urged lawmakers to amend the judicial charter to prevent senior judges from screening the verdicts of the judges in the court of first instance before they are delivered in court.

Source: ThaiPBS, October 4, 2019

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News: Cops Charge Driver in Crash That Killed 13 Students

BANGKOK — Police on Thursday pressed four criminal charges against a pickup truck driver behind a high-speed crash that killed 13 students earlier this week.

The charges filed against driver Nittaya Sukchan today include driving under the influence leading to deaths of others, investigators said, citing a lab result that reportedly showed an excessive amount of alcohol in his blood. 

Three other offenses were reckless driving, damage of properties, and allowing passengers to sit at the back of a pickup truck. 

Apart from the 13 students from a vocational college killed in the crash in Samut Prakan on Sunday, six people were also wounded including Nittaya. The driver was hospitalized after the incident. 

Read: Cops May Reinstate Pickup Truck Seating Ban After 13 Died in Crash

Speaking to police today, Nittaya said the students were being taunted by local gang members when he picked them up from a mor lam concert, so he sped away from the scene as soon as possible to avoid a confrontation. 

Nittaya also said he lost control of the vehicle when he was trying to overtake a car in front of him. 

The most serious charge Nittaya faces – fatal DUI – carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail. 

Source: Khaosod, Teeranai Charuvastra, Staff Reporter, October 3, 2019 5:50 pm. 

St. Thomas Aquinas

St. Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224/25–1274) propounded an influential systematization, maintaining that, though the eternal law of divine reason is unknowable to us in its perfection as it exists in God's mind, it is known to us in part not only by revelation but also by the operations of our reason.

Source: https://www.britannica.com

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