The Assizes
| Published date | 01 April 1941 |
| Date | 01 April 1941 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002201834100500202 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
The Assizes
FORGING A
PASSPORT:
CONSPIRACY AND
JOINT
POSSESSION
R. v. George William Goddard and Israel Heisler
THE
accused were charged at the
Old
Bailey in an indict- J,
ment
containing three
counts:
firstly with conspiring
together and with other persons to forge a passport, secondly
with forging a passport issued to Heisler, and thirdly with
having in their possession with intent to deceive a document
so closely resembling an exit permit issued by the Passport
and Permit Office as to be calculated to deceive.
Goddard was a clerk employed in the Passport Office.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two years' imprison-
ment. Heisler was acquitted.
Heisler was a musician in
bad
health who had made
two unsuccessful applications to the Passport Office for an
exit permit to go to
South
America. He met Goddard at a
fun fair and subsequently saw him at the Passport Office
and paid him money,
and
Goddard
apparently stamped his
passport with an exit permit without authority.
Tucker
J.
summed up as follows:
"The
charge in the
first count is conspiracy to forge a passport and the essence
of the offence is committed directly the accused agree.
It
does not matter whether
the
object of the conspiracy is
carried out or not. It is very seldom
that
you can
put
your
finger directly on the fact of an agreement, unless of course
it is in writing, and you
must
generally judge by what
the
parties do.
"
The
prosecution
say:
'See
what they did,
and
is it
not clear that they were acting in this way as a result of
agreement?'
Bear in
mind
the fact
that
the charge is
conspiracy to forge and nothing else. You may
think
that
Heisler was trying to oil
the
wheels of the Passport Office
121
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