CommentsCORRUPTION WATCH-Traditionally, Western Civilization has detested lying and perjury.
The Code of Hammurabi called for the death penalty for bearing false witness. The Torah, the Gospels and the Koran all condemned perjury.
Abusive power which corrupts the justice system relies heavily upon perjury. According to the rabbis, the four judges in Sodom were named Liar, Great Liar, Forger and Perverter of Justice and their behavior caused the destruction of their society. Later, the Ten Commandments forbid perjury, e.g. bearing false witness, while the Romans, whose legal system was the basis of much of the subsequent European justice system, punished some perjury by death.
Why are Lying and Perjury Daily Occurrences?
All lies are not perjury. Perjury is the term we use for a lie that is a criminal offense. Under California Penal Code, §118, perjury involves purposely providing materially false information while under oath. Thus, mistakes of fact are not perjury, but testifying under oath that your prior sworn testimony was a mere mistake when, in fact, it was purposely false does exonerate the testifier. Rather, it invokes the rule any school child knows: “Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
Thus, perjury is a small subset of lies which are made under oath. In California such an oath can be when signing a declaration or other document like a tax return that states your statements are true from your own personal knowledge and if they contain falsehoods, you have committed perjury. If you take the witness stand in a civil or criminal hearing or deposition and tell a material lie, you have committed perjury. A felony perjury conviction for that can result in a four-year prison term.
Grand Lies Are Not Perjury
When no oath is involved, telling grand lies and repeating them incessantly is not perjury. Trump’s insistence that the Obama Administration’s immigration policies required him to separate babies and toddlers from their parents who were seeking asylum was a huge lie, but it was not perjury. Nothing the President says, no matter how false, can be perjury because he is not under oath.
Political Lying Has Special Names
As we learned from Donald Trump’s spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, Trump does not “lie,” he has “alternate facts.” Did Donald Trump thereafter use “accurate facts,” “truth,” or “reality”? Nope. Rather, we have endured more than a year and a half of “alternate facts.” We have deteriorated into a world of “Fake News,” referred to often by Trump and has become a signal that he’s lying. This phenomenon has become a punch line for late night comedians: “If Trump calls it fake, it must be true.”
Who is at Fault for Elevating Lying and Perjury to an Art Form?
In California state courts, perjury has become king. Civil Code, §47(b) provides that a statement made as part of a judicial proceeding is privileged. In other words, California has turned perjury connected to a civil or criminal trial into a privilege. That means the perjurer cannot be sued for telling the most outrageous lies.
Falcon v Long Beach Genetics, Inc., (2014) 224 Cal. App. 4th 1263, shows how far the California courts have extended the protection for perjury. If a couple goes to a lab for paternity determination and the lab provides them false information and the couple relies on that false information, they can sue the lab. If, however, that same test is sought for the purpose of introducing it in court and the lab personnel intentionally testify falsely about paternity, the couple cannot sue the lab. In California we have a bizarre world in which a regular lie unconnected to any court proceeding can carry liability for its falsity, but the lab, in this case, has complete immunity when the lab tests are conducted for a lawsuit.
Who would think that lying in court provides protection for the liar? In fact, Civil Code, §47(b) removes liability from attorneys who coerce their clients to commit perjury in court. (Doctors Co Ins vs Superior Ct,(1990) 225 Cal. App. 3d 1284.)
What Happens to Society When Perjury Becomes a Privilege?
How can perjury be a crime under Penal Code § 118 and a privilege under Civil Code, § 47(b)?
The difference is that Penal Code § 118 allows a prosecutor to criminally prosecute someone who commits perjury, while Civil Code § 47(b) prevents the injured person from suing the perjurer. Thus, in a criminal trial if the prosecutor solicits a lying jailhouse informant to commit perjury, the jailhouse informant knows that the defendant cannot sue. At the same time, the perjurer knows that the DA will not prosecute him for lying, but if he refuses to cooperate with the DA and lie in court, the DA can make life miserable for him. This is one reason why California has an epidemic of judicial corruption. DAs can always force someone one to lie for them.
As people will learn with the November 2018 Orange County District Attorney race between the DA Tony Rackauckas and OC Supervisor Todd Spitzer, for years the Orange County Sheriff lab has been providing false evidence in criminal trials, including having the crime lab technicians commit perjury. This perversion of justice by liars, grand liars and forgers reportedly involves thousands of cases. (That is one reason why in one of my previous articles in CityWatchI advised other counties not to let the Golden State Murder cases begin in Orange County.)
Who Will Play God’s Role
Since God no longer hails fire and brimstone down upon the evil doers, will anyone play that role? Yes. This time the federal courts are playing God. (Thankfully, someone is.) Ask Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, and a gaggle of others who have been indicted by the Feds.
The Federal courts in California also take perjury seriously. While Californians feel safe lying in declarations by claiming “I was mistaken” when that case moves to federal court, their false claims of mistake can become the second perjury count in federal criminal indictments. Just when the perjurers feel they are protected by state prosecutors, they can find their case on the federal court docket.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams’ views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
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