Kuwait Court of Cassation principle number 91

Summary: - Punishment for forgery of an official document concerns the perpetrator’s deliberate alteration of the truth in the document by one of the means prescribed by law. Articles 257 and 259 of the Penal Code. The condition therefor. - Judgments in criminal matters are based on certainty and conviction, not conjecture and probability. - The evidence relied upon by the judgment. Its condition: it must lead to the result derived from it without arbitrariness in inference and without inconsistency with reason and logic, assumptions and abstract considerations. - The meaning of legally adequate reasoning for a judgment: identifying the grounds and arguments on which it rests and which produce it, in fact or law, in a clear, detailed statement enabling the justifications for its ruling to be discerned. - A conviction must include the reasons on which it is based. Contravention thereof is a deficiency preventing the Court of Cassation from reviewing the correct application of the law. Rule: The law prescribes punishment for the crime of forgery of an official document under Articles 257 and 259/1 of the Penal Code where the perpetrator deliberately alters the truth in the document by one of the means prescribed by law, the alteration is capable of creating the belief that it accords with the truth, and there is an intention to use the document for the purpose for which it was altered. It is an established principle of evidentiary inference that the evidence relied upon by the judgment must lead to the results derived from it without arbitrariness in inference or inconsistency with reason and logic. Judgments in criminal matters must be based on certainty and conviction, not conjecture, probability, assumptions, and abstract considerations. Article 175 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Trials requires every conviction to include the reasons on which it is based, failing which it is void. Legally adequate reasoning means identifying the grounds and arguments on which the judgment rests and which produce it, in fact or law. To achieve its purpose, this must be in a clear, detailed statement enabling the justifications for the ruling to be discerned. Casting the judgment in general, obscure expressions or presenting it in a summary form does not fulfil the legislature’s purpose in requiring judgments to be reasoned, and does not enable the Court of Cassation to review the correct application of the law to the facts as established in the judgment.