Kingdom of Thailand

Abstract

Chapter 3, the first of the book’s four case study chapters, provides an outline of the death penalty laws and practice of Thailand during the period 1991–2016, describes Thailand’s clemency laws and accumulated practice in death penalty cases over the same period, and most importantly provides several theoretically supported hypotheses potentially explaining Thailand’s extremely ‘high’ clemency rate of 95 per cent or more. This structure is reprised in each of the four case study chapters, leading to a comparative analysis of the respective explanatory factors in Chapter 7. In Thailand’s case, suggested factors explaining the overwhelming likelihood of capital prisoners to obtaining capital clemency over the aforementioned twenty-six-year period are the following: Thailand’s Buddhist monarchy, headed from 1946 until October 2016 by King Bhumibol Adulyadej; the drawn-out royal pardon process leading to excessively long stays on death row; the practice of arbitrary and extrajudicial executions against criminal suspects over the years; and the special treatment enjoyed by foreign prisoners to safeguard Thailand’s international relations.