Forgery & Uttering Defense in Jacksonville

Forgery and uttering are two different acts

Forgery is creation. Under section 831.01, it is falsely making, altering, forging, or counterfeiting a written instrument, a check, a deed, a contract, a will, a public record, with the intent to defraud another. Uttering is use. Under section 831.02, it is passing, publishing, or offering a forged instrument, knowing it to be false, again with intent to defraud. The same false check can give rise to both charges: forgery when it is written, uttering when it is handed to a teller. A person can be charged with one, the other, or both, and prosecutors frequently charge uttering even when they cannot prove who actually created the document, because the act of passing it is enough.

Understanding which act the State is really alleging matters to the defense, because the proof differs. Forgery asks who made or altered the instrument. Uttering asks what the person knew when they used it. The two questions have different answers and different evidence, and conflating them is a common weakness in how these cases are charged.

Knowledge and intent are the whole case

Neither offense punishes an innocent mistake. Both require that you acted knowing the instrument was false and with the intent to defraud. That requirement is the heart of nearly every forgery and uttering defense. A person who deposits a check that turns out to be counterfeit has not uttered a forged instrument if they believed it was good. A person who signs another's name with permission, or with legal authority, or in a recognized representative role, has not committed forgery, because there was no intent to defraud. The State has to prove the guilty knowledge, and it usually has to prove it by inference, from circumstances that often support an innocent explanation just as well as a guilty one.

Authority is the recurring theme. Many of these cases arise inside relationships, a family member handling a parent's finances, an employee with signing privileges, a partner managing a joint account, where the real dispute is about the scope of permission, not about deception. When authority is genuinely in question, what looks like forgery in a charging document can dissolve once the relationship and the understanding between the parties are laid out.

How the defense gets built

Because the evidence is a document, the defense starts with the document. Who created it, when, on whose authority, and what the accused actually knew at each step are questions the records can answer or at least complicate. Bank records, prior course of dealing, written or implied authorizations, communications between the parties, and the timeline of the transaction all bear on knowledge and intent. The work is reading those materials closely and testing whether the State can really prove the guilty state of mind the statutes require.

Graham W. Syfert has defended the accused across Northeast Florida since 2007. He owned a technology company before law and serves in the Georgia Bar's Technology Law Section, which helps when a case turns on records, signatures, and how documents were actually produced and handled. Because these cases are often built before an arrest, getting counsel involved early, before you give your account of the signature, can matter a great deal.