Supreme Court Decisions

Interesting Article
The defendant obtained a genuine passport issued to a person named “Mr. Sittichai Homphuang,” removed the photograph of the true passport holder, and replaced it with his own photograph. He then used the altered passport to travel out of and later back into Thailand through immigration checkpoints.The key issue was that a photograph, by itself, is not a document within the meaning of Section 1 (7) of the Penal Code. However, once the defendant’s photograph was affixed to the passport, which was an official document, the alteration changed the meaning of the passport as a whole. The passport falsely represented that the defendant was Mr. Sittichai, when in fact he was not.The Supreme Court held that replacing the true passport holder’s photograph with the defendant’s own photograph caused the passport to contain a false representation as to a material matter and therefore constituted forgery of an official document under Section 265 of the Penal Code.When the defendant subsequently presented the forged passport to immigration officers upon both his departure from and entry into Thailand, he also committed two separate offenses of using a forged official document under Section 268, because the forged document was used on two separate occasions.The Supreme Court therefore reversed the lower court’s judgment and held that the defendant was guilty both of forging and of using a forged official document. The fact that the alteration consisted only of replacing the photograph, without changing any other written content, did not prevent the conduct from constituting forgery, as the alteration affected a material element of the document.

Interesting Article
In this case, the second defendant and others falsely represented themselves as the owners of a truck and prepared a forged motor vehicle sale agreement by forging the seller’s signature. They then delivered the document to the injured party in order to make the transaction appear credible. The conduct clearly demonstrated dishonest intent. The forged agreement was created in order to obtain money from the injured party and to prevent the injured party from being able to rely on the document to recover the money afterward. The Court therefore regarded the forged agreement as a document of title within the meaning of the law.When the defendant delivered the forged agreement to the injured party, this constituted a separate offense of using a forged document of title. The conduct also amounted to fraud by falsely representing oneself as another person. Since these offenses arose from the same act and constituted a single act violating several provisions of law, the Court imposed punishment under the provision carrying the most severe penalty, namely the offense of using a forged document of title under Section 268 in conjunction with Section 265 of the Penal Code.