Trends of Using Forensic Evidence for Judge's Consideration of Court in Thailand

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Sarat Luandee
Sarit Suebpongsiri
Choawit Rakangthong

Abstract

The research used data from 690 cases judged in the supreme court of Thailand between 2003 and 2016 classified into two groups: general factor and factors based on the evidence for the case proceeding. The results of general factors showed that 62.90% of prosecutors and 99.13% of defendants were male. Prosecutors related to defendants as known persons in 66.94% of the cases. Crimes in the cases occurred in similar proportions during the day and night. The results of factors based on the evidence for case-proceedings indicated that prosecutors’ testimonies, the autopsy, and forensic evidence were related to the judgement (P<0.01), with the value of the odds ratio being 29.67, 5.46, and 3.70, respectively. In cases involving forensic evidence in the case proceedings, the court can punish 87.57% of the offenders. However, when factors which could determine the value of the odds ratio were analyzed using logistic regression, the judgement was affected by: testimonies, the report to the police, testimonies related to the prosecutor’s evidence, the autopsy, and forensic evidence (P<0.01). Factors on testimonies corresponding to the prosecutor’s evidence had the highest value of Exp(B) of 23.16. The research showed that the case-proceedings of the supreme court of Thailand used many kinds of evidence for judgement but that cases using forensic evidence resulted in the court decided without any question.

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References

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