Australian Jailed For Life In Thailand

[george]

Australian jailed for life in Thailand

Andrew Hood pleaded guilty to the crime.

(Reuters: Sukree Sukplang, file photo)

BANGKOK: -- An Australian man who confessed to trying to smuggle three kilograms of heroin out of Thailand has been sentenced to life in jail.

Police arrested Andrew Hood, 37, in early December last year as he tried to leave Bangkok airport for Sydney.

During Hood's trial earlier this month, two police officers gave evidence and showed photographs of a number of packages taped to his stomach and legs.

The packages contained heroin worth about $500,000.

When he was first detained, Hood told reporters he attempted to smuggle the drugs for the money.

Hood's feet were chained as he stood in the court as the verdict was read.

The judge told him he was due a death sentence, but his confession meant he was given a jail term instead.

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

Thai authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the 34-year-old Australian who was with Hood at the time he was arrested, but who escaped.

-- abc.net.au 2009-08-05

[Hawk]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

[bojo]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

[ianh68]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

I'd plump for arrogant imperialist mindset.

[Publicus]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

Can we get a petition going for a death sentence?? We could probably get 50,000,000 signatures easily.

[Splatter]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

I read in the Last Executioner written by

Chavoret Jaruboon

...that Prauth Sanun, a member of the Bang Kwang execution team (who had executed a drug dealer) was later arrested carrying 700,000 amphetamine pills. Prath is is now on death row.

I would also go with the

they think they can get away with it mindset.

Edited August 5, 2009 by Splatter

[onomataho]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

Can we get a petition going for a death sentence?? We could probably get 50,000,000 signatures easily.

Just wait until Taksin's back in the driver's seat. No petition will be needed. He'll just slip and hit his head in the shower!

[MongerSEA]

It's disappointing that someone hauling smack out of the Kingdom gets life, but farang murderers here often get a only few years and serial pedophiles are frequently released so the police can extort them again and again.

[hansnl]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

Bojo, only around 12-15% of the runners are caught.

But, what I would like to know is where and from whom he obtained the "parcels"

And where and to whom he had to deliver.

I have a feeling that not much was done to try to find the source or the destination.

[Beacher]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

Perhaps he DID mean that. I'd take a death sentence over the prospect of spending the rest of my life in a Thai prison.

[clonetom]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

Can we get a petition going for a death sentence?? We could probably get 50,000,000 signatures easily.

Exactly what I would have expected here...

[Splatter]

oops double post.

Edited August 5, 2009 by Splatter

[londonthai]

border custom checks in australia are much more strict than anywhere in the world, so not sure what he was thinking about his chances not being cought. In thailand airports, unless police is not tipped by the foreign resident custom officers, the risk is much lower, but of cource screaning by the gates is at random

[bojo]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media, that fools in full knowledge of the conditions in Thai prisons still take a chance with their futures when most have the safety net of a welfare system back home. I wonder if the success rate is so high that most mules make it through and they consider it a safe bet. Junkies numbed beyond repair, I can understand, but the rest. Madness beyond belief.

Regards Bojo

Bojo, only around 12-15% of the runners are caught.

But, what I would like to know is where and from whom he obtained the "parcels"

And where and to whom he had to deliver.

I have a feeling that not much was done to try to find the source or the destination.

I would imagine that any names he had, would have been blurted out immediately under the slightest pressure by the authorities in the hope of a lighter sentance. I suppose getting life is lighter than death depending on how you look at it. What method are they using for the death sentence these days?

How do you know only 12-15% are caught by the way?!

Regards Bojo

[cocopops]

It's disappointing that someone hauling smack out of the Kingdom gets life, but farang murderers here often get a only few years and serial pedophiles are frequently released so the police can extort them again and again.

Disappointing, ridiculous and wasteful.

[webfact]

All this reminds me on Warren Fellows. He did 12y? before he was 'released'. But his story happened almost 25y ago

[thesyndicate]

plead guilty? ehh a UFO taped the heroin to my body. He know the laws and he know the punishment nothing more to say. Feel worse for them that tricked into smuggle stuff.

[reenatinnakor]

life probably doesn't mean life. he will probably get 15 years and then get released and then be at the age where he can easily get a pretty young thai girlfriend pretending to love him not for his passport. not too bad a deal then.

[dale8]

Hello, this man made a poor choice and will pay a big price. I still do not know why so many people will gamble with their freedom and life for the greed of money. It will set a good example for those aspiring social morons to find a different line of work. Cheers.

[chmike]

Thai authorities have issued an arrest warrant for the 34-year-old Australian who was with Hood at the time he was arrested, but who escaped.

-- abc.net.au 2009-08-05

Escaped? How does someone who has checked in for a flight at an international airport escape from the police?

[ThaiBasil]

All this reminds me on Warren Fellows. He did 12y? before he was 'released'. But his story happened almost 25y ago

But back then life in Thai prison was even worse ... yes, I'd read the book some years ago ...

[webfact]

plead guilty? ehh a UFO taped the heroin to my body. He know the laws and he know the punishment nothing more to say. Feel worse for them that tricked into smuggle stuff.

with substantial evidence on hand a not guilty plea will result in a death sentence!

Life means he can get a reduction (maybe) if a pardon is granted, death means pardoned "to live" if granted -

Helter Skelter!

Edited August 5, 2009 by webfact

[b2bme]

With a life sentence there is always the chance of a pardon 10 - 15 years down the track.

[Spoonman]

It amazes me that with all the life sentences handed out, fully covered by the media

Just having checked on news.com.au i see no coverage of this latest sentence, what Aussie media outlets are running the story at this point in time.

Edited August 5, 2009 by Spoonman

[guyinthailand]

Hooray for the guy who escaped the clutches of these Thai cop maniacs with their idiotic war on drugs.

----------------

We're Losing the Drug War Because Prohibition Never Works

By Hodding Carter III.

There is clearly no point in beating a dead horse, whether you are a politician or a columnist, but sometimes you have to do it just the same, if only for the record. So, for the record, here's another attempt to argue that a majority of the American people and their elected representatives can be and are wrong about the way they have chosen to wage the "war against drugs." Prohibition can't work, won't work and has never worked, but it can and does have monumentally costly effects on the criminal justice system and on the integrity of government at every level.

Experience should be the best teacher, and my experience with prohibition is a little more recent than most Americans for whom the "noble experiment" ended with repeal in 1933. In my home state of Mississippi, it lasted for an additional 33 years, and for all those years it was a truism that the drinkers had their liquor, the preachers had their prohibition and the sheriffs made the money. Al Capone would have been proud of the latitude that bootleggers were able to buy with their payoffs of constables, deputies, police chiefs and sheriffs across the state.

But as a first-rate series in the New York Times made clear early last year, Mississippi's prohibition-era corruption (and Chicago's before that) was penny ante stuff compared with what is happening in the U.S. today. From Brooklyn police precincts to Miami's police stations to rural Georgia courthouses, big drug money is purchasing major breakdowns in law enforcement. Sheriffs, other policemen and now judges are being bought up by the gross. But that money, with the net profits for the drug traffickers estimated at anywhere from $40 billion to $100 billion a year, is also buying up banks, legitimate businesses and, to the south of us, entire governments. The latter becomes an increasingly likely outcome in a number of cities and states in this country as well. Cicero, Ill., during Prohibition is an instructive case in point.

The money to be made from an illegal product that has about 23 million current users in this country also explains why its sale is so attractive on the mean streets of America's big cities. A street salesman can gross about $2,500 a day in Washington, which puts him in the pay category of a local television anchor, and this in a neighborhood of dead-end job chances.

Since the courts and jails are already swamped beyond capacity by the arrests that are routinely made (44,000 drug dealers and users over a two-year period in Washington alone, for instance) and since those arrests barely skim the top of the pond, arguing that stricter enforcement is the answer begs a larger question: Who is going to pay the billions of dollars required to build the prisons, hire the judges, train the policemen and employ the prosecutors needed for the load already on hand, let alone the huge one yet to come if we ever get serious about arresting dealers and users?

Much is made of the cost of drug addiction, and it should be, but the current breakdown in the criminal justice system is not one of them. That breakdown is the result of prohibition, not addiction. Drug addiction, after all, does not come close to the far vaster problems of alcohol and tobacco addiction (as former Surgeon General Koop correctly noted, tobacco is at least as addictive as heroin). Hard drugs are estimated to kill 4,000 people a year directly and several tens of thousands a year indirectly. Alcohol kills at least 100,000 a year, addicts millions more and costs the marketplace billions of dollars. Tobacco kills over 300,000 a year, addicts tens of millions and fouls the atmosphere as well. But neither alcohol nor tobacco threaten to subvert our system of law and order, because they are treated as personal and societal problems rather than as criminal ones.

Indeed, every argument that is made for prohibiting the use of currently illegal drugs can be made even more convincingly about tobacco and alcohol. The effects on the unborn? Staggeringly direct. The effects on adolescents? Alcoholism is the addiction of choice for young Americans on a ratio of about 100 to one. Lethal effect? Tobacco's murderous results are not a matter of debate anywhere outside the Tobacco Institute.

Which leaves the lingering and legitimate fear that legalization might produce a surge in use. It probably would, although not nearly as dramatic a one as opponents usually estimate. The fact is that personal use of marijuana, whatever the local laws may say, has been virtually decriminalized for some time now, but there has been a stabilization or slight decline in use, rather than an increase, for several years. Heroin addiction has held steady at about 500,000 people for some time, though the street price of heroin is far lower now than it used to be. Use of cocaine in its old form also seems to have stopped climbing and begun to drop off among young and old alike, though there is an abundantly available supply.

That leaves crack cocaine, stalker of the inner city and terror of the suburbs. Instant and addictive in effect, easy to use and relatively cheap to buy, it is a personality-destroying substance that is a clear menace to its users. But it is hard to imagine it being any more accessible under legalization than it is in most cities today under prohibition, while the financial incentives for promoting its use would virtually disappear with legalization.

Proponents of legalization should not try to fuzz the issue, nonetheless. Addiction levels might increase, at least temporarily, if legal sanctions were removed. That happened after the repeal of Prohibition, or so at least some studies have suggested. But while that would be a personal disaster for the addicts and their families, and would involve larger costs to society as a whole, those costs would be minuscule compared with the costs of continued prohibition.

The young Capones of today own the inner cities and the wholesalers behind these young retailers are rapidly buying up the larger system which is supposed to control them. Prohibition gave us the Mafia and organized crime on a scale that has been with us ever since. The new prohibition is writing a new chapter on that old text. hel_l-bent on learning nothing from history, we are witnessing its repetition, predictably enough, as tragedy.

---

Reprinted with permission of Wall Street Journal Jul 13, 1989. Mr. Carter is a political commentator who heads a television production firm.

[CHINWA]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

I agree. it would be less painful.

[cmiuc]

Any chance of a royal pardon?

so he would need to get a 1 million signatures? and serve 1/2 his sentence?

[Publicus]

Outside the court Hood told reporters he was disappointed with the life sentence.

I suppose he would have preferred the death sentence.

Can we get a petition going for a death sentence?? We could probably get 50,000,000 signatures easily.

Just wait until Taksin's back in the driver's seat. No petition will be needed. He'll just slip and hit his head in the shower!

If Thaksin were back on top I'd have to think Casablanca. The authorities would be deciding whether the Aussie had hanged himself in his cell or was shot while trying to escape.

He anyway should be able to get all the drugs he needs in prison.

[Thpluppen]

Oopsy Daisy, what an idiot. Everybody knows that Thailand is not the country you want to get caught doing this kind of business, indeed what an idiot. As many other posts are already stating, unfourtunately he will only spend 15 years or something. I feel sorry for people getting tricked into this shit, but if you go into it willingly, just for the money, well tough luck, go ahead and rott in jail. You do the crime, then do the time.

[webfact]

I feel very sorry for his daughter!

not for Mr. Drugdealer himself...

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Thai prison system!

this idiot should have known better! But wait... he is an idiot...

he thought to get away with 3-4y maximum

Edited August 5, 2009 by webfact