Section 67: Necessity
Statutory text (Thai original)
ผู้ใดกระทำความผิดด้วยความจำเป็น (๑) เพราะอยู่ในที่บังคับ หรือภายใต้อำนาจซึ่งไม่สามารถหลีกเลี่ยงหรือขัดขืนได้ หรือ (๒) เพราะเพื่อให้ตนเองหรือผู้อื่นพ้นจากภยันตรายที่ใกล้จะถึงและไม่สามารถหลีกเลี่ยงให้พ้นโดยวิธีอื่นใดได้ เมื่อภยันตรายนั้นตนมิได้ก่อให้เกิดขึ้นเพราะความผิดของตน ถ้าการกระทำนั้นไม่เป็นการเกินสมควรแก่เหตุแล้ว ผู้นั้นไม่ต้องรับโทษ
English translation
Whoever commits an offence out of necessity:
(1) because he is under compulsion or under a power which he cannot avoid or resist, or
(2) because it is to cause himself or another person to escape from an imminent danger which could not be avoided by any other means, when he did not cause that danger to arise through his own fault,
shall not be punished.
For an offence under this Section, the act must not exceed what is reasonable under the circumstances.
This English translation is provided for reference only and has not yet been firm-verified. Always rely on the Thai original.
Firm annotation
Section 67 provides the defence of necessity in Book 1 on Criminal Liability, an excuse that removes punishment rather than a justification. It covers two situations: subsection (1), acting under an unavoidable and irresistible compulsion or power, and subsection (2), acting to escape an imminent danger not of the doer's own making, where no other means was available. Both require a proportionality limit; the act must not exceed what is reasonable, and excess is dealt with by Section 69, which allows the court to reduce the penalty below the statutory minimum. Necessity differs from self-defence under Section 68, which responds to an unlawful attack, whereas necessity may respond to danger from any source. The requirements are strict: mere convenience or delay does not qualify.
Why this matters in practice
Section 67 can wholly excuse an offence, but the bar is high and factual: the defence must show a genuine, imminent, unavoidable situation the accused did not create, with no other realistic option. Courts reject the plea where the accused had time or alternatives, or where the pressure was mere advice or preference rather than an irresistible compulsion. Even a valid necessity is capped by proportionality, and going too far shifts the case to mitigation under Section 69 rather than full excuse. Because necessity is fact-intensive and often misread, anyone relying on it should build the evidence carefully with a Thai lawyer.
Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section
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Supreme Court Judgment No. 9738/2544 (2001)
Conduct that is not done under an unavoidable, irresistible compulsion or power is not an act committed out of necessity and does not escape punishment under Section 67.
The person accused had recovered court documents that had gone missing from the case file but kept them for a further two to three days before returning them. The Court held this was not conduct under an unavoidable compulsion, so it was not an act of necessity that would escape punishment under Section 67.
Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.
Cited in 25 Supreme Court decisions (1959 to 2013)
Selected citing decisions
- Decision 5553-5554/2556 (2013)
- Decision 9738/2544 (2001)
- Decision 779-780/2540 (1997)
- Decision 734/2529 (1986)
- Decision 2168/2528 (1985)
- Decision 694/2503 (1960)
- Decision 702/2502 (1959)
- Decision 8649/2549 (2006)
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.
Most often cited alongside
- Section 91 11
- Section 78 8
- Section 83 7
- Section 29 7
- Section 30 7
- Section 90 6
Sections that appear in the same judgments as this one most often. The figure is the number of decisions.
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 is the necessity defence under Section 67?
It excuses an offence committed either under an unavoidable, irresistible compulsion or to escape an imminent danger the person did not cause and could not avoid otherwise. If the act is reasonable, there is no punishment.
What happens if the act exceeds what was necessary?
The full excuse is lost, but under Section 69 the court may still inflict a punishment less than that provided by law for the offence to any extent.
Is necessity the same as self-defence?
No. Self-defence under Section 68 responds to an unlawful attack, while necessity under Section 67 may respond to danger from any source and is an excuse from punishment rather than a full justification.
Related guides on ThaiLawOnline
Cite this section
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Plain citation
Penal Code, s. 67 (Thailand) -
Academic citation
Penal Code (Thailand), s. 67. ThaiLawOnline, https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-67/ (accessed 17 August 2026). -
Thai citation
ป.อ. มาตรา 67 -
Permalink
https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-67/ -
Embed on your site
<blockquote cite="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-67/"><p>Whoever commits an offence out of necessity: (1) because he is under compulsion or under a power which he cannot avoid or resist, or (2) because it is to cause himself or another person to escape from an imminent danger which could not be avoided…</p><footer>Penal Code, s. 67 (Thailand) — <a href="https://www.thailawonline.com/thai-penal-code/section-67/">ThaiLawOnline</a></footer></blockquote>
The Thai text is authoritative. The English is an unofficial translation by ThaiLawOnline, free to reuse with attribution.