## Facts

- Denis O’Brien received a deed conveying land to him as grantee.
- While the deed was in his possession, he crossed out his own first name and wrote in his wife’s first name, intending the deed to show his wife, Mary O’Brien, as grantee.
- O’Brien caused the altered deed to be recorded with the county recorder, resulting in an official record listing Mary O’Brien as grantee.
- O’Brien later notified the recorder of the alteration and asked that the record be changed to reflect the original conveyance to him.
- With the consent of the grantor and Mary O’Brien, the recorder restored O’Brien’s name on the recorded instrument/record as a correction.
- O’Brien was prosecuted under a statute criminalizing the willful alteration of a public record, convicted, and sentenced to two years in state prison.
- O’Brien appealed, arguing the evidence and statute did not support a felony conviction on these facts.

## Issues

1. Whether conduct involving an altered deed that is recorded, followed by a consensual correction restoring the record to its original, truthful form, constitutes “willfully alter[ing] a public record” under the penal statute.
2. Whether the statute requires proof of a corrupt or fraudulent intent to falsify or injure, beyond a voluntary change to a recorded instrument or entry.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court of California reversed the judgment of conviction.
- The court held the statute does not criminalize every intentional change affecting a recorded instrument or record.
- On these facts—particularly the later correction made openly and with consent to restore accuracy—the conduct did not amount to the felony offense of willfully altering a public record within the statute’s meaning.

## Legal Principles

- “Willful alteration” of a public record, in this statutory context, requires wrongful intent—commonly described as corrupt or fraudulent intent to falsify the record or cause public or third-party injury—not merely a deliberate change.
- An alteration that functions as a correction restoring the public record to the truth, undertaken with consent of the interested parties, falls outside the statute aimed at falsification.
- The statute targets conduct that makes or keeps public records untrue in a way that may mislead those who rely on them.
- Penal statutes are construed strictly; if it is doubtful whether corrective, non-wrongful conduct is covered, the doubt is resolved in favor of the accused.

## Conclusion

The conviction was reversed because the offense of willfully altering a public record requires wrongful, falsifying intent, and a consensual correction that restores the record’s accuracy is not the kind of injurious falsification the statute was designed to punish.


People v. O'Brien, 96 Cal. 171 (Cal. 1892)