Criminal Law in Thailand Part 11: More on wrongful arrest

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Dave The Dude

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Criminal Law in Thailand Part 11: More on wrongful arrest

Last time we talked about how to get sprung if you've been wrongfully arrested. Next we will talk about penalties, both civil and criminal, against police officers who engage in illegal practices in connection with arrest. We'll also talk about penalties imposed on the government as a result of these illegal activities.


What sort of illegal practices are we talking about? Let's look at a few fictitious examples. In the first, which we will discuss this week, the arrest is wrongful but not malicious.
Let's say Mr X is running down the street late at night. A police officer, new to the force, arrests Mr X, because he's informally dressed and thinks he could be fleeing the scene of a crime.
The officer stops Mr X, handcuffs him, says nothing and takes him to a police station. Mr X asks to be allowed to call his wife. Because it's late, however, and nobody in authority is around, the officer refuses and locks Mr X in an empty office in an unused part of the building that is being used for storage, planning to explain the whole thing to his sergeant in the morning.
A couple of hours later, after the police officer is back on his beat, he's called on the radio and sent over to another station to fill a staff shortage there. Everybody forgets about Mr X until a couple of days later, when the sergeant hears someone banging on the door of the unused office.
It turns out that Mr X is really a medical technician and, when arrested, was out jogging after a late shift at a hospital a couple of blocks away. The sergeant sends Mr X home to his wife, who has been worried sick, with an apology and promise to discipline the arresting officer.
Several of the superiors of the arresting officer interview him. When asked about it, the arresting officer says he was unaware of any crime that had been committed, and just arrested Mr X on general suspicion and the fact that he was dressed in a jogging suit, the preferred costume of robbers. The officer explains he was then put on another matter and was so busy he forgot about Mr X, locked in the office.
What did the arresting officer do wrong here? First, Mr X was originally taken into custody without cause. You'll recall from previous columns that a police officer may make an arrest without a warrant only under certain circumstances, for example when the officer comes upon a suspect being pursued by a citizen or citizens who shout that the suspect has committed a crime.
Just because Mr X was running at night in a tracksuit didn't give the arresting officer the right to detain him. Second, Mr X was never told the charge against him. Likewise, he wasn't told he could make a statement and that anything he said could be used in evidence against him.
Third, Mr X wasn't allowed to call anyone, either a lawyer or a family member. Finally, Mr X was detained for more than 48 hours with no charge. As we've discussed in earlier columns, all of the items mentioned above independently constitute wrongful arrest. As stated above, the arresting officer in this example wasn't maliciously acting against Mr X. The officer was doing his job as best he could, he was just inexperienced and made mistakes.
Can Mr X take legal action to be compensated for the harms he has suffered? Yes. Under the Act on Liability for Wrongful Acts of Officials (the Act), Mr X could claim compensation for damages he received from the Royal Thai Police Office.
Mr X might make a claim under the Act, for example, if he lost his job as a result of having being detained without being able to tell his employer he wouldn't be able to come to work. Likewise, let's say he had diabetes and hadn't had access to his insulin while locked in the office and suffered a major heart problem as a result. He could claim under the Act for the damages to his health.
Finally, by virtue of the fact that he was kept somewhere without being allowed to leave, under improper circumstances, he could claim under the Act for having been wrongfully deprived of his liberty.
Mr X could recover under the Act in two ways. First, he could sue the Royal Thai Police. Second, alternatively, he could make an administrative claim to the Royal Thai Police Office. Mr X has other options. For example, he could file a complaint with the Royal Thai Police requesting that the officer be disciplined.
We'll talk about this, and civil and criminal penalties against individual officers wrongfully discharging their duties in later columns.
 
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