The appeal document in the case of James Christensen, who was in August sentenced to 10 years imprisonment for arson, was yesterday submitted to the lower court in Langsuan in Chumporn Province in the South of Thailand.
The documents were prepared by Sunee Srichantra of the lawfirm Kamthorn Surachet & Somsak and handed in by the local defense lawyer Pongsak Suttanin, who lost the case in the lower court.
The submission was witnessed by Gregers Moller, the publisher of ScandAsia, who has put himself in charge of a collection of funds to bail out the Dane during the two to three years, which it may take before the Appeal Court in Bangkok reaches its verdict.
“I am truly impressed with the appeal document,” says Gregers Moller.
“It reveals point by point how weak the purely circumstantial evidence in the case in fact is and how many mistakes were committed during the police investigation.”
The two lawyers were more modest in their remarks:
“We feel confident that we have done a good job, but now it is up to the court to reexamine the case,” said Khun Sunee and Khun Pongsak after the document was accepted by the court.
Immediately after the submission, Sunee Srichantra and Gregers Moller went to visit James Christensen in the prison to inform him of the development in his case. Clearly moved by the good news, James Christensen thanked deeply the lawfirm of Kamthorn Ounhirunskul and Khun Sunee Srichantra in particular for their generous help.
Within the next month, the public prosecutor will now have to submit its comments to the appeal. After that, the court in Langsuan will forward all the documents in the case to the appeals court in Bangkok, where it may take up to three years to reach a verdict.
The day before, Gregers Moller had consulted the court regarding the release against bail of James Christensen. The court refused to allow him to submit a bid of less than the 500.000 baht, which was set as bail during the trial at the lower court.
Because the collection had not reached this amount, Gregers Moller instead negotiated with a professional bail insurance broker. The broker offered to submit 800.000 baht or whatever amount the court requested if a twenty percent commission was paid up front. The full amount should further be guaranteed by Gregers Moller personally as well as guaranteed by the two companies, in which he is the Managing Director.
This offer was Friday morning presented to the Danish community in Thailand with a request for anyone willing to offer the loan at a cheaper price to come forward. The same afternoon, Mikkel Hass called him up from Denmark to offer an interest free loan of 15.000 Danish kroner. Via the Danish Consual at the Danish Embassy in Bangkok, James’ mother also offered to support the collection with 30.000 Danish kroner.
Following these contributions, Gregers Moller then resolved to offer to lend the rest of the amount in order to avoid wasting a major part of the collected funds on the expensive professional broker fee.
James Christensen was in mid August sentenced for in the early morning hours of February 15, 2005 to have set fire to the house of a farmer engaged in breeding cocks for cock fighting.
To read more news in the past about this case, click here:
http://scandasia.com/search/search.php?txtSearch=%22James+Christensen%22&searchFrom=news
