In the United States, litigants are legally forbidden to lie under oath, and perjury is regarded as a serious offense. However, the problem is that, in court practice, litigants are rarely prosecuted if the fact of perjury was not evidenced. This situation observed with reference to many court cases provokes the following question: why are perjury laws not effectively enforced in the United States to address the problem? Although US perjury laws seem to be followed in courts, they have certain weaknesses and need revision and expansion because perjury has significant negative effects on the litigation process, resulting in inappropriate decision making and even in convicting the wrong person.
Current perjury laws adopted in the United States at federal and state levels define lying under oath as an act of intentionally making a false statement regarding particular material facts discussed during the litigation process. As a result, a person can be accused of falsifying information, but not of misleading questioners for the purpose of affecting a judicial decision (Doyle 1-4). Robbins claims that these statements are provided in the federal and state perjury laws, and there is still a question about considering telling or not telling the whole truth as an offense (265-266).
According to the decision in Bronston v. United States, litigants’ literally truthful responses, even if they omit certain information, cannot be discussed as perjury. This decision created additional obstacles to prosecuting potentially lying litigants in the situation when currently followed perjury laws are not properly enforced in the country.
It is possible to state that today the US legal system has no effective deterrent against perjury, and this situation has dramatic effects on litigation and society in general. According to Robbins, the main negative consequence is the effect on a litigation process and a decision-making process (267). The problem is that, omitting critically important information, defendants or other litigants remain unpunished. Without experiencing a perjury charge, litigants can mislead questioners and even judges by their incomplete answers to questions.
Weaknesses in the followed law can lead to more crucial consequences that are actively discussed by the critics of the current legislation. Thus, presenting literally true responses but omitting some facts, litigants can contribute to accusing wrong people (Douglis 341-344). In this situation, defendants cannot be discussed as providing intentionally false statements, but their misleading answers can seriously affect the court decision. From this perspective, revisions of perjury laws are required in order to guarantee that all people lying under oath will face a perjury charge (Robbins 286-288). The formulations of false statements and literally true responses need to be reconsidered and changed to prevent the situation of allowing misleading responses and the omission of facts.
Research on the topic of perjury laws in the United States has indicated that followed statutes are ineffective and need particular amendments. The reason is that they contribute to the situation when sophisticated litigants can lie under oath without any consequences for them because they know how properly formulate their statements. The overall weakness of the federal and state perjury laws allows for applying the decision used in Bronston v. United States and observing the situation when these perjury statutes are not enforced in the country. As more people can avoid facing a perjury charge depending on gaps in the statutes, perjury laws can be discussed as being rarely enforced.
Works Cited
Douglis, Allison. “Disentangling Perjury and Lying.” Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities, vol. 29, no. 2, 2018, pp. 339-374.
Doyle, Charles. False Statements and Perjury: An Overview of Federal Criminal Law. 2018. Web.
Robbins, Ira P. “Perjury by Omission.” Washington University Law Review, vol. 97, 2019, pp. 265-294.