It is no defense to a prosecution for perjury that the accused did not know the materiality of the false statement made by him; or that it did not, in fact, affect the proceeding in or for which it was made. It is sufficient that it was material, and might have been used to affect such proceeding.
Cal. Penal Code § 123
Perjury and Subornation of Perjury
Applied in 11 court decisions — leading case 11 Cal. 4th 416 - People v. Kobrin (1995)
Most recently applied in Ho Yim v. William Barr (August 2020)
Enacted 1872.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: California Legislative Information. Reproduced from public-domain California statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.