ความไม่เป็นธรรมในการจ่ายเงินค่าทดแทนให้แก่จำเลย ในคดีอาญา: กรณีคดีสีเทา

Abstract

Thailand has guaranteed the right of the offenders to receive compensation for the dismissal from the criminal cases. This right was granted by the Constitution of 1997, article 246, and later promulgated the Damages for the Injured Person and Compensation and Expense for the Accused Criminal Case Act of 2001. However, since the law entered into force, the offenders submitted compensation petitions 11,946, but there were only 2,489 whom the courts dismissed the case and received compensation. Moreover, in the appeal procedure, the number of compensations was reduced to 330 from 436 defendants in the criminal cases. The criminal procedural system in Thailand bascs on an adversarial system. The courts' hearing rule is also that the evidence must "prove beyond a reasonable doubt." Therefore, when the trial procedure has no concrete evidence to prove that the offenders were guilty. Then, this should be enough to dismiss the cases. However, the cases' sentencing mainly does not demonstrate further argument to prove that the accused were innocent. According to article 20(3) of this legislation, it requires that the offenders were not the criminal, or the offenders' act was not a crime. Hence, the accused could not receive compensation. This paper would propose an improvement of the provision to "in case that there cannot provide sufficient evidence to prove the defendant guilty, the accused who was dismissed from the court is subject to the compensation, except they plea guilty, but the law requires the dismissal case by the court.