diff --git a/Modules/_sqlite/cursor.c b/Modules/_sqlite/cursor.c
index 7fd7db31ee4..8efa8127195 100644
--- a/Modules/_sqlite/cursor.c
+++ b/Modules/_sqlite/cursor.c
@@ -355,9 +355,9 @@ PyObject* _pysqlite_fetch_one_row(pysqlite_Cursor* self)
                             error_obj = PyUnicode_FromEncodedObject(buf_bytes, "ascii", "replace");
                             if (!error_obj) {
                                 PyErr_SetString(pysqlite_OperationalError, "Could not decode to UTF-8");
-                                Py_DECREF(error_obj);
                             } else {
                                 PyErr_SetObject(pysqlite_OperationalError, error_obj);
+                                Py_DECREF(error_obj);
                             }
                             Py_DECREF(buf_bytes);
                         }