Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing private criminal actions in Thailand. What are we talking about here? Well I am doing a series, I have done a number of videos on this in the past but I am kind of doing a redux here if you will, comparing sort of the American Common Law to Thai Law. Again I want to be very clear, let me preface this video by saying I am an American Attorney, I am a naturalized Thai citizen but I am not a Thai lawyer, I'm not a Thai attorney. I look at this as sort of an outsider, as sort of an exercise in Comparative Law coming from the American jurisprudence tradition that I come from. 

That said, I talk with the lawyers here in the firm, Thai lawyers before I make videos like this but these videos should be viewed for educational purposes only. I am not the end all be all on these topics, I will never claim that. I am just sort of chiming in and showing that hey they do things a little differently in terms of legal proceedings here in Thailand and private criminal actions are one of these.

And people ask, when I talk about this with sort of people, just lay people, clients, whatever and they ask me "hey, what are you talking about with these private criminal actions?" Well in the United States for example in a given jurisdiction, you will usually see criminal charges brought by the State; a prosecutor needs to bring them. Now we have prosecutors here in Thailand who do bring charges but it's also possible for private citizens to do it of their own accord. What am I talking about here? Well in an American context, if you are charged criminally, the documentation that is going to pertain to your charges are going to read: the state where I am from, the State of Kansas, “the State of Kansas versus your name”, “State of Kansas versus Benjamin Hart” or if you are from like Virginia it would be like “the Commonwealth of Virginia versus Mr. so and so”. Here in Thailand it could just be “me as a person versus you as a person’ in terms of criminal charges. It's a very different posture and it's very different from a procedural standpoint. 

Now that is about as deep into that as I am going to go because much past that I think it is sort of beyond my own bailiwick and my own understanding and I don't like to get into the high weeds of not knowing what I don't know about precisely what that means procedurally, but having been around Thai Attorneys, working cases and talking to them about sort of the posture and procedure associated with these personal criminal actions or I should say private criminal actions, yeah it is it is fundamentally different than the way the Criminal Justice System operates in the United States.