§ 423 Forgery, misdescription of forged instrument immaterial, when.

If someone is charged with forgery and the fake document has been destroyed or hidden because of what the defendant did, the exact wording used to describe that document in the charges does not have to be perfectly accurate. The law recognizes that prosecutors cannot describe a document with perfect detail if the defendant made sure that document could not be examined.

To use this rule, the charging papers must state that the defendant destroyed or hid the document. Then at trial, the prosecution has to actually prove that this destruction or hiding happened. If they prove it, small mistakes or differences in how the document was described in the charges will not cause the case to fall apart.

Basically, this rule stops someone from benefiting from their own actions. If a person destroys evidence to avoid being accurately charged, they cannot then use small errors in the description of that evidence as a way to escape conviction.