Death Sentence
It was rare for Westerners to receive the death sentence in Thailand, which was at the time carried out by machine gun. One other was Australian pilot Donald Tait who in 1987 was being held in a Thai prison awaiting the death sentence for drug smuggling. However by the time of Blake's trial in June 1988 Tait had successfully appealed against the verdict and was back in Australia.
After her sentencing Blake had the distinction of being the first Westerner in modern Thailand to face death by official firing-squad. She was the first Western woman in Thailand to be sentenced to death. No foreigner had been executed in Thailand in preceding decades and there had been no execution of a Thai national on drug charges since the mid-1970s.
Read more about this topic: Nola Blake
Famous quotes containing the words death and/or sentence:
“But, when nothing subsists from a distant past, after the death of others, after the destruction of objects, only the senses of smell and taste, weaker but more enduring, more intangible, more persistent, more faithful, continue for a long time, like souls, to remember, to wait, to hope, on the ruins of all the rest, to bring without flinching, on their nearly impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)