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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: one_less who wrote (10917)	10/23/1998 2:43:00 PM
From: jbe	Respond to of 67261

Re: Perjury and the "spirit of the law" By the letter of the law, he is probably going to skate. By the spirit in which it was established, no way. I'm not so sure. It seems to me that such laws are designed, among other things, not just to nail the criminal, but also to protect the witness. And remember, that "the law" is defined not just by statute, but also by precedent (case law). Again, I have to stress that I am no lawyer. So let me quote (as food for thought) several passages from the Administration rebuttal that attempt to give a basic outline of what "the law" on perjury is: Perjury requires proof that a defendant, while under oath, knowingly made a false statement as to material facts....The "knowingly " requirement is a high burden: the government must prove the defendant had a subjective awareness of the falsity of his statement at the time he provided it... The following types of answers are not capable of being false and are therefore by definition non-perjurious: literally truthful answers that imply facts that are not true, see, e.g., United States v. Bronston, 409 U.S. 352, 358 (1973), truthful answers to questions that are not asked, see, e.g., United States v. Corr, 543 F.2d 1042, 1049 (2d Cir. 1976), and failures to correct misleading impressions.... The Supreme Court has made abundantly clear that it is not relevant for perjury purposes whether the witness intends his answer to mislead, or indeed intends a "pattern " of answers to mislead, if the answers are truthful or literally truthful.... Thus, in explaining the law of perjury, the Supreme Court and numerous lower federal courts have set forth three clear standards. First, answers to questions under oath that are literally true, but unresponsive to the questions asked, do not,as a matter of law, fall under the scope of the federal perjury statute. That is so even if the witness intends to mislead his questioner by his answer and even if the answer is false by "negative implication. " The second clear rule is that answers to questions that are fundamentally ambiguous cannot, as a matter of law, be perjurious. The third "clear standard" may be the real clincher: Finally, a perjury conviction under 18 U.S.C. ' 1621 cannot rest solely on the testimony of a single witness, and, at the very least as a matter of practice,no reasonable prosecutor would bring any kind of perjury case based on the testimony of one witness without independent corroboration , especially if the witness is immunized, or has any question as to credibility or truthfulness. As the Supreme Court has made clear, a perjury case "ought not to rest entirely upon >an oath against an oath.=@ United States v. Weiler, 323 U.S. 606, 608-09 (1945). Do you see why I am not really so sure? Incidentally, Clinton could have taken the Fifth, and avoided all of this. Maybe he now wishes that he had. :-) jbe