5. Forgery of Private Documents

5. Forgery of Private Documents

This crime differs essentially from all the other crimes of forgery we have so far examined in respect of its object, that is to say, in respect of the private character of the document.

As to the means of perpetrating the crime, these are those specified in Section 187. Therefore, the forgery may be committed by false signatures, by the alteration of the writing or signature, by the insertion of the name of any supposititious person or by any writing made or entered in the document when already formed or completed.

Now, the Criminal Code does not give a definition of a private writing; nor is there a precise definition in the civil laws, although these often refer to such writings (e.g., Sections 1276 and 1277, Civil Code). But Section 633 of the Code of Organization and Civil Procedure lays down that:

"Any act which by reason of the incompetence or incapacity of the officer by whom it was drawn up, compiled or published, or which, owing to the absence of some formality prescribed by law, has not the force of a public act, shall be admissible as evidence as a private writing between the parties, if the parties have signed or marked the same or if it is proved that such act has been drawn up or signed by some other person acting on their instructions".

From this it is perhaps possible to infer that a “private writing” is one which is formed or received without the intervention of any appropriate public officer and to which the law attributes the force of evidencing a transaction in the widest sense of the word.

In order that this crime may arise, it is necessary that the private writing - the object of the forgery - shall tend to cause injury to any person or to procure gain (in the old Italian text: “atto a nuocere o a produrre alcun lucro” This element is not, as we have seen required in the case of forgery of public documents, because, as Roberti points out: