From the Richmond Dispatch, 8/25/1864, p.1, c. 5

Decision Reversed. – Sometime since, Isaac Jacobs was tried before the Hustings Court on the charge of obtaining fifteen hundred dollars under false pretenses from Nathan Bernstein. His offence consisted in furnishing forged passports to Bernstein to go North via Westmoreland, Virginia; and the jury who tried the case sentenced him to two years imprisonment in the penitentiary. From this decision, Jacobs took an appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals, sitting at that time at Coyner’s Springs, in Botetourt county, Virginia, which tribunal reversed the judgment of the Hustings Court and remanded the accused back for re-indictment, assigning the following as their reasons for doing so: “That although the indictment found by the Hustings Court against Jacobs alleges that he did feloniously and falsely pretend that he could and would furnish Berstein with a lawful passport to said county of Westmoreland, yet it fails to aver that at the time he received the fifteen hundred dollars from Bernstein under said alleged false pretense, he knew that he could not furnish such lawful passport, and also that the indictment does not sufficiently explain what is meant by the term lawful passport to enable the Court judicially to know the nature and character of the instrument which it is alleged he (Jacobs) falsely pretended that he could and would furnish.”

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