Transcript of the above video: 

Yeah unfortunately, we are still keeping up with this case. It does involve a foreigner, it is a legal proceeding, it kind of just is within the bailiwick of this channel, so that's why we are trying to be continuing to follow this. There are data points here that I think could be useful for some folks; there is a news element here. That said, there are a number of other news organizations out there. Hopefully I'm able to provide a little bit of extra context from a legal perspective. 

That said I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Pattaya News, that is thepattayanews.com, the article is titled: Details Emerge on Former Australian Trucker, Main Suspect in Brutal Murder of Thai Teen Girl in Pattaya, Described by Neighbors as Loner, Detached, "Slow".  You can go and check out the Pattaya News article directly for like the exhaustive details here, but pertinent to an underlying case, I felt these following two excerpts were noteworthy. Quoting directly: "Police alleged that Carman met the 17-year-old in the Beach Road area early on June 25th and took her to his condominium. CCTV footage is said to show them entering together hand-in-hand around 3:30 a.m. and him later leaving alone, dragging a large black suitcase. The victim's body was discovered early on June 27th. Investigators reported signs of a struggle in the room and fingernail scratches on Carman, which he has attributed to other causes in his defense claims. He faces multiple charges, including murder and offenses related to concealing the body and taking a minor for sexual purposes." Quoting further: "He claims she tried to extort him for money and threatened him with a knife and his actions were self-defense. Police and the public have widely scrutinized these statements, pointing out he kept the body in his room for almost a day, disposed of it, and then tried to flee Thailand, which were not actions of an innocent person acting in self-defense. He is also roughly three times her size many people noted." So yeah, I mean just the defense here seems to be at least as of the time of this video, that there was something akin to self-defense involved. I've talked to a number of folks here in Thailand who have serious doubts about that. Again, this was a 17-year-old girl; it was a 40-something-year old male and he again as noted, was three times her size.

Now not so much getting into that, but more to the issue of making a self-defense claim, there are going to be factors that are going to mitigate against that. Again, the note that the body basically stayed in the room for an entire day. Again the thinking is, and I've been watching a lot of like old school Law and Order the last few weeks and - I rather like the show - the later sort of spinoff shows weren't so much my thing, but the original show I really, really like, especially Sam Waterston and Cherry Warbox years on that show were great. In any event, when you have even watched that show - and obviously TV lawyering isn't the same as real lawyering - but occasionally they bring up real concepts that come up. In self-defense, it doesn't look like self-defense when somebody holds on to the body, puts it into a suitcase, tries to dispose of it, then flee the jurisdiction. Now again, people's common sense can factor in and say, look, people can get scared, they can do things even if what they did in the moment might have been legally correct, in the aftermath they may get scared and do things that may cause what occurred in the moment to look bad. That said, it can also be used as evidence that in fact it was not self-defense, that something happened and whatever it was that happened was something that person was scared of facing legal repercussions for. Hard to say. Again that is why we have adjudications; that's why one is innocent until proven guilty. 

That said, it is my understanding, I have seen footage of this person seemingly to be acknowledging the underlying facts of the case, and they seem to be acknowledging their culpability on it. Now again, what that means in terms of a full adjudication remains to be seen. The evidence would seem to stack up against this person; again I find, just as an outside observer I find a self-defense argument under this fact pattern pretty difficult to sustain. Not impossible, again I don't know the underlying facts; if they really existed, if something akin to what this person said happened, actually happened, again we have to see the adjudication play out, we have to see the investigation play out to ascertain what really happened. 

But that said, as of the time of this video, this person is still under arrest. It does not appear they are going to be released anytime soon. In fact they are probably going to be detained for a number of months while the investigation itself is proceeding. That being said, as we noted in other videos, we will certainly be keeping folks updated on this channel as the situation evolves.