People v. Von Tiedeman

Citations

• 120 Cal. 128
• 52 P. 155
• 1898 Cal. LEXIS 722

Syllabus

<p>Criminal Law—Perjury—Materiality of Evidence to Issue—Sufficiency of Indictment.—Where an indictment for perjury substantially alleges that the nature of the issue in an action pending was such that it became and was material to know whether or not a certain photograph therein exhibited to the defendant, who was called as a witness therein, was a photograph of a woman who represented herself to the defendant as bearing a certain name, and that the defendant feloniously swore that it was such photograph, it can be said as matter of law that the evidence was material to the issue.</p> <p>Id.—Matters Circumstantially Tending to Prove Issue.—Matters which circumstantially tend to prove the issue are deemed material, and any evidence tending in a material degree to strengthen the case of a party to an action, is material to the issue.</p> <p>Id.—Construction of Penal Code—Unqualified Statement not Known to be True—Consciousness of Want of Knowledge—Willful Element Essential to Crime.—Section 125 of the Penal Code, which declares that “an unqualified statement of that which one does not know to be true is equivalent to a statement of that which he knows to be false,” is not intended to define the crime of perjury, but must he read in connection with section 118 of that code defining the crime, and, so read, is designed to include cases where a witness willfully testifies to matters of which he knows that he has no knowledge. The “willful” element in the testimony is as essential to the crime of perjury in the case of an unqualified statement of that which one does not know to he true as in the case of a statement which one knows to be false.</p> <p>Id.—Erroneous Instruction—Unqualified Method of Testimony—Criminal Intent Ignored.—An instruction which based criminality solely upon the distinction as to the method of the testimony as being qualified by the belief of the witness, or unqualified in form of statement, and charged in effect, that if the defendant unqualified