Section 78 (Thai Criminal Code)

Section 78 of the Thai Criminal Code authorises a court to mitigate the punishment of an offender by up to one-half where there is "a reasonable ground to be lenient" — most commonly because the defendant has made a useful confession. There is no statutory floor: the discount can be anywhere between zero and 50%. Because §78 attaches to confession (and the practical alternative is months or years of pretrial remand awaiting trial), the discount functions less as judicial leniency than as the price of liberty. Refusing to plead carries the statutory maximum if convicted; confessing collapses it by half.