NAKHON PHANOM: Suspect Sab Wapee surrendered and confessed to accepting an offer of 400,000 baht to say he was the driver in a fatal hit-and-run accident, not teacher Jomsap Saenmuangkhot.
Mr Sab, 61, met Pol Maj Gen Suwicharn Yankittikul, the Nakhon Phanom police commander, on Wednesday. He acknowledged a perjury charge and is liable to a jail term of up to three years and/or a fine up to 60,000 baht if found guilty.
Mr Sab is a friend of Ms Jomsap, 55, whose request for a retrial was rejected by the Supreme Court late last week. He said that Suriya Nuancharoen, 54, a close friend of Ms Jomsap, had promised to pay him 400,000 baht for his false testimony and to also keep him out of prison.
He had received only some money for travel, but not the 400,000 baht sum, Mr Sab said.
Pol Maj Gen Suwicharn said Mr Sab gave useful information and was temporarily released without bail because he had surrendered. Police would pass the case to public prosecutors in 48 hours.
Police were still waiting for six other suspects to answer summonses in the perjury case, the Nakhon Phanom police chief said. Investigators were also checking legal aspects of the case relating to Ms Jomsap.
The six suspects included relatives of Mr Sab and the husband of Ms Jomsap who had brought Mr Sab to the authorities to support their attempts to help Ms Jomsap.
Ms Jomsap, a former teacher in Sakon Nakhon province, was found guilty of reckless driving causing death after a pickup truck the court believed she was driving hit a bicycle, killing 75-year-old Lua Pobamrung, in Nakhon Phanom's Renu Nakhon district on March 11, 2005. The Supreme Court upheld the first court's sentence of three years and two months in prison in 2013.
Following her release by a royal amnesty in April 2015, Ms Jomsap took the rare move of commencing wrongful conviction proceedings through the Justice Ministry.
The Supreme Court last Friday dismissed the case. The court said it suspected there existed a network that hired out people to confess to crimes they did not commit, and the network had backed Ms Jomsap's claim of wrongful conviction.
