Section 191: Explaining Doubts in Enforcing a Judgment
Statutory text (Thai original)
เมื่อเกิดสงสัยในการบังคับตามคำพิพากษาหรือคำสั่ง ถ้าบุคคลใดที่มีประโยชน์เกี่ยวข้องร้องต่อศาลซึ่งพิพากษาหรือสั่ง ให้ศาลนั้นอธิบายให้แจ่มแจ้ง
English translation
When a doubt arises in the enforcement of a judgment or order, if any person having an interest concerned petitions the court that rendered the judgment or order, that court shall give a clear explanation.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 191 provides the mechanism for clarifying, as opposed to altering, a decision under Title 3 on judgments and orders. When genuine doubt arises about how a judgment or order is to be enforced, an interested person may petition the same court, which must explain its decision clearly. The remedy is explanatory only; it works alongside Section 190, which forbids substantive amendment of a pronounced decision, so the court cannot use an explanation to change the result or restructure a penalty. In practice it is invoked in enforcement disputes, for example over how imprisonment terms are counted or combined.
Why this matters in practice
This section is a useful tool when you or a prison authority disagree over exactly what a judgment requires, for example whether sentences run together or one after another. File a petition with the court that issued the judgment and ask it to explain, but do not expect it to change the sentence: for that you need a timely appeal. If enforcement of a criminal decision has real consequences for you, it is worth taking advice from a lawyer first through an online consultation with a Thai lawyer.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 1330/2563 (2020)
A petition under Section 191 asks the court only to explain a doubt about its judgment; where the judgment itself is already clear, there is nothing to explain.
After being acquitted with the seized mobile phone ordered forfeited, the defendant petitioned under Section 191 for the trial court to explain doubts about the judgment, because the prison had downgraded his prisoner class and cut good-time based on his possession of a phone. The trial court found its judgment was already clear, illustrating that the Section 191 remedy is explanatory and limited to genuine doubt about the decision.
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 5416/2550 (2007)
Section 191 allows an interested person only to ask the court that gave the judgment or order to explain a doubt arising in its enforcement. It is not a route to alter the result, and the trial court accordingly ruled it had no power to aggregate the sentences in sixteen final judgments. A fresh petition on the same ground, after the first had been finally decided, is a barred repeat petition under Civil Procedure Code Section 148 with Section 15, a public-order question the Supreme Court may raise of its own motion under Section 195 paragraph two with Section 225.
On 30 January 2001 the defendant petitioned the trial court to aggregate the terms of imprisonment in sixteen cases so that they would not exceed twenty years under Penal Code section 91(2). The trial court dismissed the petition and the Court of Appeal Region 5 affirmed, and that decision became final. The defendant then filed a fresh petition on the same ground. The Supreme Court held that this was a repeat petition on an issue already finally decided, barred by Civil Procedure Code section 148 with section 15, and that as a question of public order it could raise the point itself. It therefore did not decide whether section 191 permits a court to alter the result of final judgments; that proposition was the trial court's reasoning on the earlier petition, not a holding of this decision.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 4 Supreme Court decisions (1966 to 2020)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 1330/2563 (2020)
- Decision 391/2509 (1966)
- Decision 5416/2550 (2007)
- Decision 1475/2536 (1993)
This list is selected automatically, weighted towards judgments that turn on this section rather than ones that merely recite it when passing sentence. It has not yet been reviewed by the firm.
Counted across the firm's corpus of 83,652 Supreme Court decisions, 1921 to 2026. The count is complete; the stated year range trims rare outliers so it describes where the citations actually sit. These figures are computed by us and are not official court statistics. How we count these, and what we measured
Frequently asked questions
What can I do if a criminal judgment is unclear about how it should be enforced?
Under Section 191, an interested person may petition the court that issued the judgment to explain it clearly. The court clarifies its meaning but does not alter the decision.
Can a court change the sentence when it explains a judgment under Section 191?
No. The court can only clarify what its judgment means. Changing the sentence would be a substantive amendment barred by Section 190; the proper route for that is an appeal.
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Criminal Procedure Code, s. 191 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Criminal Procedure Code (Thailand), s. 191. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-criminal-procedure-code/section-191/ (accessed 1 September 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.วิ.อ. มาตรา 191 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-criminal-procedure-code/section-191/ -
Embed on your site
<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-criminal-procedure-code/section-191/"><p>When a doubt arises in the enforcement of a judgment or order, if any person having an interest concerned petitions the court that rendered the judgment or order, that court shall give a clear explanation.</p><footer>Criminal Procedure Code, s. 191 (Thailand): <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-criminal-procedure-code/section-191/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.