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Published on September 4, 2007

The Supreme Court verdict, read out in the provincial court in Chiang Mai, cited conflicting prosecution evidence. It upheld a Court of Appeal ruling acquitting Sangthong sae Yang and Inthorn sae Jong, two Chinese Haw men now in their mid-20s, which overturned the original lower court ruling in 2002 that sentenced both men to death.

According to facts verified by the final acquittal verdict, DNA signatures extracted from both defendants' sperm did not match that found in the rape victim.

This vital evidence was not available to both the lower court and the Court of Appeal.

The Supreme Court also acknowledged an additional piece of evidence, which was supplied to the Court of Appeal. Pictures of a village meeting showed that both defendants were away from the crime scene - a hilltop in Doi Angkhang in Fang - on the night of the crime: February 3, 2000.

Melbourne backpacker Kelvin Bourke, 23, was shot by two young assailants while camping with his girlfriend Sheri MacFarlane in an isolated part of the national park. McFarlane was raped and brutally beaten but managed to escape after pretending to be dead. The original verdict, by a judge in Fang, was contentious. Chiang Mai lawyer Wirachai Wangkaheamsuk said two years ago that the only reason prosecutors appealed the release of the two men was because the case involved foreign tourists.

Wirachai described his clients as "peh rebarp" - scapegoats - for a crime that local police were under enormous pressure to resolve quickly.

"The case against the men is so weak that the latest appeal should be dropped altogether. They should be given compensation for the ordeal they have endured," he said at the time.

Yesterday, the families of the two hilltribe men were delighted to be finally relieved of a huge burden that had seen their sons spend two years on Death Row.

But down in Melbourne, the MacFarlane family is hardly likely to be happy with the outcome from a police case that was condemned as incompetent almost from the start.

The Nation