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Erika Fry examines the ethics and theatrics of crime re-enactments, a practice which seems to have had the curtain drawn on it in the rest of the civilised world

Bangkok Post
August 10, 2008



Several Saturday mornings ago, Nantawut Promjai entered a 7-Eleven store on Petchaburi Road. He picked out a pack of gum, and then, approaching the register, pulled a plastic gun on the girl behind the counter.

He had gone through the same routine the night before, and nine times total over the previous four days in a burgling spree that had targeted Family Marts and 7-Elevens up and down the gritty strip of 24-hour car washes and short-time motels.

This morning's incident was a little different though. His motions were not particularly brisk, his chance of getaway (barring some Houdini-like fantastics), practically nil.

His hands were already cuffed and a phalanx of police officers, crime reporters, and curious onlookers followed closely at his side.

He'd already confessed too. This wasn't a hold-up, but only the re-enactment of the one he'd staged there the night before. He had been apprehended shortly after the robbery, and 5 or 6 hours before authorities had him back at it, in the same 7-Eleven - looking a far less fierce a stick-up artist - for the morning re-enactment.

In an apparent attempt to simulate real events, police had dressed Nantawut, a small-boned refrigeration mechanic, for the re-enactment in an oversized metallic jacket and a trucker hat that sat awkwardly atop his superfluously bandaged head.

In what was either a very blooperish or a very dubious arrest, Nantawut was said to have fallen off his bike and wounded his head after he had been stopped and pulled over by police. In the interim hours, it had been wrapped up, mummy style.



Going through the motions that morning, in his baggy clothes and handcuffs, Nantawut looked meek, embarrassed, and maybe like a man that would rob 7-Eleven stores with a plastic gun to pay off the debts of his mother's farm and his wife's masters degree. (Actually, that may just be the case.)

Yet, as strange and uncomfortable as it is to watch someone get such a public come-uppance, as Thai crime re-enactments go, Nantawut's was a small and intimate shaming.

Just a convenience store hold-up (this reference is not to diminish the crime, but to juxtapose it with others,) there were no victims other than a possibly traumatised store clerk. And so, there were also no grieving family members, no outraged friends, no rock-hurling, hair-pulling (it happens!), heckling vigilantes - only a swarm of police officers and reporter-types snapping photos. Whatever spectators had stopped to watch were there by chance, and they were bemused by the activity, not beset with anger over it.

While human rights activists object to re-enactments because of the abuse and shame often thrown at suspects, law enforcement officials say Thailand's crime re-enactmets were never intended as a form of punishment or pillory, but as an investigative tool.

Though one may wonder what more information police really stand to gain from a suspect that has already been cuffed and confessed, a retired police detective with the Royal Thai Police (RTP) calls the force's tradition of re-enactments, "very useful."

British import

The RTP introduced crime re-enactments in 1929, having picked up the technique from the British system of criminology and behavioral analysis.

Re-enactments, which have since been abandoned by the British, and law enforcement just about everywhere else, (they seem to pop up in Indonesia and South Korea on occasion), were apparently commonplace back then. However, suspects were made to watch rather than participate in the re-enactments, in an effort to encourage confessions.

Historians with the RTP add that the belief at the time was that "criminals were basically cunning and would not confess unless there was solid evidence against them."

This is quite different from - actually the unlawful opposite of - the way re-enactment procedures are supposed to function today. Re-enactments are only legal when a suspect has already confessed. The idea is not to elicit a confession, but to reinforce it with the suspect's plausible re-rendering of events.

While a confession would, in most cases, seem to carry the sort of weight that would ensure a conviction, police say the re-enactment can serve as useful evidence in cases where suspects reverse their statements.

"With the participation of a suspect, investigators can retrace the steps they took to solve the case and determine whether they have sufficient information and evidence to prove the guilt or innocence of the suspect," says the retired police chief. "If the reconstruction of a crime is consistent with the collected evidence, police investigators will have a strong case in their hands. This is also beneficial to the prosecution of the suspect."

Wisit Wisitsora-At, Director-General of the Office of Justice Affairs, adds further clarity, explaining that, in Thailand, even if a suspect confesses to a crime, it is not enough to find him/her guilty. The confession must be substantiated and proven by evidence.

While he admits re-enactments can help to do this, he is not particularly sold on the merits of the practice.

A former judge, Mr Wisit says he gave little weight to re-enactments when they came up in court, and that in general, he finds them a silly and largely unhelpful exercise to the justice process.



"I don't see much benefit to it. Re-enactments are just telling a story, not making a case. A confession is not everything. I'd rather evidence be found out through a scientific approach."

This seems to be the prevailing viewpoint in the wider world of criminal investigation, too, where more rigorous forensic techniques have relegated re-enactments to the realm of reality TV as manhunt propaganda and the stuff of crime-busting shows like America's Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries.

The Association of Firearm and Toolmark Examiners, an international organisation "dedicated to the advancement of one of the finest disciplines of Forensic Science" stresses the critical distinction between crime reconstructions and re-enactments. The organisation is critical of the latter, saying a re-enactment "has nothing whatsoever to do with scientific principles. . .To confuse the two is to confuse crime scene analysis with a puppet show."

The play's the thing

To be sure, Thailand's crime re-enactments have taken on elements of theatre in the past.

They are staged quite publicly, for large, audiences (sometimes numbering in the thousands) at the actual crime scene and the same time of the crime.

Police officers stand in for victims and witnesses; female officers are used to recreate cases of rape, and are not spared what would seem to be physically awkward and uncomfortable scenes in which they are say, pinned to the ground.

Though they do strive for authenticity and make a particularly earnest effort with wardrobe (see photo of monkey-masked ATM robber), officers usually opt for fake weaponry, preferring plastic knives and toy revolvers over the real thing.



Re-enactments, like all good dramas, are usually saved for the occasions of the most grisly, lurid, and intriguing of crimes; though there are some exceptions (see box story ), this means rapes, murders, and high-profile cases which, being real and not just play, stir the emotions of onlookers in ways in which even a masterfully acted production of say, Hamlet, never could.

With family members and friends of victims often on hand to watch suspects, however unnaturally, pretend to commit really heinous acts, it's little wonder re-enactments have often led to lynch mobs, and more violence. (See Mob vs. Man)

With that in mind, one has to question the strategy of staging public re-enactments in especially explosive cases, such as those involving gangs of vocational students or, as is quite common, suspected insurgents in Thailand's deep South.

Accordingly, re-enactments often become elaborate, resource intensive affairs that require large numbers of police officers in order to keep the suspect from fleeing, or more frequently, to protect the suspect from being attacked.

Earlier this year in Songkhla, 300 officers were needed to protect the Songkhla man who confessed to killing his karaoke party-giving neighbour and her seven friends for being too noisy.

In other cases, re-enactments have been multiple day affairs, in which suspects and security are shuttled around the country re-enacting crimes from locale to far-flung locale.

Perhaps the most common objection to re-enactments, though, relates to the detrimental effect the events have on suspect rights, and ultimately the justice process.

"Reimagining a crime is standard. The question is really whether or not to involve the suspect," says Mr Wisit, who believes re-enactments to be most dangerous in their ability to sway public opinion.

"The re-enactment will lead to prejudice and presumption of guilt before a suspect is tried."

Media coverage, he says, only exacerbates this effect.

Noted human rights lawyer and former senator Thongbai Thongpao agrees the process and the media frenzy that usually accompany it lead the public to settle the case long before the courts ever do.

"Reporters are allowed to take pictures freely during the process and the whole process is broadcast over TV and radio without restriction. Police announce the circumstances of the arrest and say the suspects have confessed to the crime. Since we never hear the suspects utter a word during the process, we have to take their word for it," he says.



Closing acts?

In late 2005, in the interest of suspect rights, the police made an effort to clamp down on this sort of coverage by banning the participation of suspects in press conferences and crime re-enactments, unless they were in the public's best interest.

The ban was short-lived, perhaps because such events are not centrally managed, but conducted at the discretion and according to the policy of each station. For that reason, there is no statistical data related to the consequences, or even the frequency of re-enactments.

Others speculate that police enjoy the coverage, and the publicity boost, just as much as the media do.

While crime re-enactments may not have been phased out completely, a 20-year Thai TV crime reporter who wished not to be identified and covers three to five re-enactments per month, says the police have become more careful in their management of the events. Police now have to wait for the expert opinion of doctors and forensic scientists before they can stage a re-enactment, he explains.

He adds, "They are more careful now, but with all respect to the police, the process is still not good enough." For example, he says many investigators still allow body collecting crews at the scene before evidence is collected and that "there are still many opportunities for evidence planting and tampering."

For this reason, he believes it's important - for the protection of people, suspects, and police - for the media to cover crime re-enactments.

In allowing media access to the events, there is automatically a community of witnesses to ensure the reenactments are conducted fairly and the suspects rights are respected, he explains. "There are lots of different people there - the media, the police, independent observers - to act as witnesses if someone confesses. It becomes hard evidence."

This issue of true and voluntary confession has come up frequently in the past.

Mr Wisit says, in his work as a judge, he has never come across a situation where someone has been forced into a re-enactment without confessing or consenting to participate. "Suspects must agree to it, the police can't force anything."

Mr. Thongbai, however, believes such episodes of coercion are probably not rare, and points to the unusally high number of suspects that seem to willingly involve themselves in such a public charade of their own guilt.

"The reason we see re-enactments so often is not because most of the suspects repent of what they have done, but rather because they are not aware they have the right to say no. Naturally, it is easy for the police to 'forget' to inform them of this right because they stand to gain from the hard evidence of the confession."

The retired police detective denied this. "In practice, if the suspect denies the charges, he will not be taken to re-enact the alleged crime. In most of the cases I handled, suspects cooperated in re-enacting the crime. Suspects who feel guilty usually cooperate. They believe this will help them get lighter penalties."

He's also seen cases where people were have been hired to confess to committing a crime for someone else.

"When we took them for the reenactment, they wrongly identified the crime scenes, escape routes, weapons and vehicles used in connection with the crime. We had no choice but to release them," he said.

Yet, in a review of two decades of cases reported in English media, that seems to rarely be the case.

Looking back through the archives, there are far more instances where suspects have been wrongfully convicted, despite unconvincing re-enactment footage, than where a bungled re-enactment has set them free.

In fact, there is only one reported case (see timeline, 1996) in the past two decades where a re-enactment has resulted in the release of a suspect.

Meanwhile, English-language media has recorded at least seven high-profile cases where suspects, obviously innocent in re-enactment footage, have nonetheless been scapegoated. Only after long legal battles (and usually some DNA testing breakthrough), have these suspects been vindicated. In each instance, the unconvincing re-enactment footage was acknowledged as evidence of innocence only in hindsight (see timeline, 2000, 2005).

Such cases serve as valuable evidence in their own right, of course; and only time will tell how much hindsight it takes to reckon the ultimate fate of the re-enactment.

For now, though, the show goes on.

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MAN VS. THE MOB

Though the Royal Thai Police banned re-enactments that "were not in the public's best interest" back in 2005, a look at re-enactments in the years since seem to indicate the ban hasn't totally succeeded at keeping the lynch mobs (or presumed guilt) at bay.

August 2, 2008: In Narathiwat, police take three militant members of RKK for a re-enactment of their arson attack on a school.

Manpower: Tight security at 12 locations, for three hours.

Mob-power: Lots of local onlookers in the already divided deep South.

March 8, 2008: In Songkhla, Weenus Chukamnerd re-enacts the karaoke party murders, in which he killed a doctor, his brother-in-law, and 6 others in a backyard gazebo for being too noisy.

Manpower: 300 police officers.

Mob-power: Police beefed up security for fear of grieving relatives.

October 30, 2007: In Phrae, three suspects re-enact the assasination of PAO head, Charnchai Silapa-auychai, who was murdered while jogging in the park.

Manpower: Lots of policemen from eight stations.

Mob-power: 4,000 villagers with sticks and rocks. Police postponed the first one to beef up security.

April 11, 2007: In Angthong's Muang district, four suspects accused of the gang-rape of a girl and the murder of her twin brother re-enact their crimes.

Manpower: Lots of officers.

Mob-power: Lots more angry bystanders who scold, cheer for execution, and attempt to attack the suspects.



September 9, 2006:In Lad Prao, three vocational students from the Pathum Wan Institute of Technology re-enact the brutal murder of a student from Rajamangala University of Technology.

Manpower: More than 100 police officers Mob-power: Violence and verbal assault erupts between groups of the rival vocational students. Police confiscate a machete at the scene and and speed up the re-enactment to get the suspects back to safety.

September 7, 2006: Two Burmese men re-enact the brutal killing of the father of an Ubon Ratchathani police commander.

Manpower: Colleagues of the Ubon Ratchathani police commander Mob-power: Police fail to prevent the suspects from physical assualt when angry relatives attack and injure the men. The re-enactment is suspended.

June 6, 2006: In Don Muang district, a rape-murder suspect re-enacts his crime at four locations.

Manpower: Police at four locations, for two days.

Mob-power: 600 angry onlookers attempt to attack the suspect and force the re-enactment to be postponed until 6 am the next morning.

January 14, 2006: On Koh Samui, fear for the safety of fisherman cancels the re-enactment of British tourist, Katherine Horton's murder.

Manpower: Police dress the murder suspects in police uniform to move them off the island and into a safer detention setting.

Mob-power: Hundreds of Samui residents who denounce the suspects for damaging the island's reputation.


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THAILAND'S WEIRDEST MOST WANTED

Usually, it's rape and murder cases which are re-enacted in Thailand, but every once in a while, the RTP investigators spring for re-enactments that are a little more mundane. Some of the recent, stranger ones:

June 10, 2007: Despite rather conclusive and incriminating video footage and IP data, Alexander John Winstone, the Tesco-Lotus blackmailer who sent seven emails threatening to poison the superstore's food if they did not pay him 2 million pounds, is taken to several Nana district internet cafes to, according to the Nation, "show police how he wrote and sent the emails."

April 23, 2006: A 20-year-old baby snatcher re-enacts her abduction of an infant at a Lopburi hospital.

July 6, 2004: A KSC Commercial employee confesses to posting nude (but censored with strips) photos of actreets Bongkot "Tak" Kongmalai on the Internet. He is made to re-enact the crime. Newspaper reports say "he pointed at the computer."



May 10, 2004: 11 foreign nationals - Chinese, Indian and Pakistani - are taken to Don Muang to re-enact their use of illegal passports.



April 18, 2004: A teacher re-enacts the attempted murder-poisoning of her 32 students. Police watch her puchase pesticide and then mix it into chocolate drinks at the school.

July 7, 2002: Two men re-enact their theft of 5 macaws from a bird farm in Bang Kapi. The suspects were keeping one of the birds in the Siemens warehouse where one of them worked.