In 2006, OJ Simpson, apparently driven by a desperate need for cash and not some literary itch, stunned the world with the announcement that he had penned (with a little help from a ghostwriter) a “hypothetical” book in which he explains how he might have killed his ex-wife Nicole and her friend Ron Goldman. The American football hero was reportedly paid the equivalent of over B100 million, although he eventually lost the rights to the manuscript to the Goldman family.

Finally released as If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer, it treats the reader to lurid descriptions of Simpson’s blood-soaked clothes as well as the existence of a mysterious man named “Pued,” a factory worker from Roi Et...

Oops, did we get our stories mixed up again? Honest mistake.

It’s just that we can’t help but wonder… how much do you think young Duang would expect to get paid for a similar book, “hypothetically” recounting the night that decorated cop  Suvicha Rodiwimut was shot dead at point-blank range in the middle of a packed, well-lit nightclub. Sounds like a great inaugural project for BK Books (assuming that Duang knows how to write).

Don’t get us wrong: we’re not saying that Chalerm’s pride and joy murdered the officer and then fled Club Twenty with the future Mr.Happy Toilet and the rest of his thug friends. Because, according to our legal system, Duangchalerm (his name at the time) is innocent. We, of course, unreservedly accept the ruling and would love to someday visit the planet that the judges who acquitted him are from.

Besides, cop-killing is no longer the issue, but whether Duang deserved to be reinstated to his position in the Army even though, on the run for months after the death of Pol. Sgt. Suvicha, he received a dishonorable discharge in 2001.

Though seemingly a simple legal question (what do the rules say?), it’s been pitched—and dutifully accepted—as a moral issue: does Duang deserve, as a nice compliment to his name change, a second chance? Prime Minister Samak apparently believes so.

Like the numerous celebrities who have weighed in on this question, we, too, are proud to live in a society where people, even those with long histories of appalling behavior, get second chances. Except if we kill you first, as in a drug war or something.

Just wondering, though: how many second chances do you get? Another question: as part of his second chance, is Duang entitled to his seven years of back pay?