Perjury. Making a false statement or lying under oath is not necessarily perjury. In the U.S., a perjury conviction requires proving that (a) the witness made false statement knowing it is false and intending to make the false statement, and (b) the false statement related to a material matter. Still, it happens all the time in civil lawsuits and, in my view, most often in the more insubstantial and frivolous ones. Despite Ken Starr’s best efforts with President Clinton in 1998, perjury prosecutions for “civil” perjury may still be rare.
However, some DOJ stats suggest an increase, and there’s no reason in the right civil case why counsel should not pursue it with prosecutors. But is perjury–or suborning it (“the lawyers will tell me what to say”)–an age-old problem or a new plague in an increasingly sophisticated and litigious world? Are perjury cases no longer reserved for just fallen public figures, bad cops and terrorism suspects? Is the reverence for oath-taking, which has been with us for at least 1500 years, on a decline?