Perjury (also known as foreswearing) is the intentional act of swearing a false oath or falsifying an affirmation to tell the truth, whether spoken or in writing, concerning matters material to an official proceeding.
Statements that entail an interpretation of fact are not perjury because people often draw inaccurate conclusions unwittingly or make honest mistakes without the intent to deceive.
Individuals may have honest but mistaken beliefs about certain facts or their recollection may be inaccurate, or may have a different perception of what is the accurate way to state the truth.
In some jurisdictions, no crime has occurred when a false statement is (intentionally or unintentionally) made while under oath or subject to penalty.
In Canada, those who commit perjury are guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.
[3] The California Penal Code allows for perjury to be a capital offense in cases causing wrongful execution.
In several jurisdictions, longer prison sentences are possible if perjury was committed with the intent of convicting or acquitting a person charged with a serious offence.
It is defined by section 131, which provides: (1) Subject to subsection (3), every one commits perjury who, with intent to mislead, makes before a person who is authorized by law to permit it to be made before him a false statement under oath or solemn affirmation, by affidavit, solemn declaration or deposition or orally, knowing that the statement is false.
(1.1) Subject to subsection (3), every person who gives evidence under subsection 46(2) of the Canada Evidence Act, or gives evidence or a statement pursuant to an order made under section 22.2 of the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act, commits perjury who, with intent to mislead, makes a false statement knowing that it is false, whether or not the false statement was made under oath or solemn affirmation in accordance with subsection (1), so long as the false statement was made in accordance with any formalities required by the law of the place outside Canada in which the person is virtually present or heard.
Everyone who commits perjury is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.
[1] A person who, before the Court of Justice of the European Union, swears anything which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true is, whatever his nationality, guilty of perjury.
Section 1 of that Act reads: (1) If any person lawfully sworn as a witness or as an interpreter in a judicial proceeding wilfully makes a statement material in that proceeding, which he knows to be false or does not believe to be true, he shall be guilty of perjury, and shall, on conviction thereof on indictment, be liable to penal servitude for a term not exceeding seven years, or to imprisonment ... for a term not exceeding two years, or to a fine or to both such penal servitude or imprisonment and fine.
This was due to the fact that their role were not yet differentiated from those of the juror and so evidence or perjury by witnesses was not made a crime.
The punishment for the offence then was in the nature of monetary penalty, recoverable in a civil action and not by penal sanction.
[38] William Blackstone touched on the subject in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, establishing perjury as "a crime committed when a lawful oath is administered, in some judicial proceeding, to a person who swears willfully, absolutely, and falsely, in a matter material to the issue or point in question".
[39] The punishment for perjury under the common law has varied from death to banishment and has included such grotesque penalties as severing the tongue of the perjurer.
[41] Perjury's current position in the American legal system takes the form of state and federal statutes.
Most notably, the United States Code prohibits perjury, which is defined in two senses for federal purposes as someone who: (1) Having taken an oath before a competent tribunal, officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare, depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration, deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully and contrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which he does not believe to be true; or (2) in any declaration, certificate, verification, or statement under penalty of perjury as permitted under section 1746 of title 28, United States Code, willfully subscribes as true any material matter which he does not believe to be true[42]The above statute provides for a fine and/or up to five years in prison as punishment.
The court uses the Dunnigan-based legal standard to determine if an accused person: "testifying under oath or affirmation violates this section if she gives false testimony concerning a material matter with the willful intent to provide false testimony, rather than as a result of confusion, mistake, or faulty memory.
[51] It thus falls on the government to show that a defendant (a) knowingly made a (b) false (c) material statement (d) under oath (e) in a legal proceeding.
[54] One significant legal distinction lies in the specific realm of knowledge necessarily possessed by a defendant for her statements to be properly called perjury.
[55] All tenets of perjury qualification persist: the "knowingly" aspect of telling the false statement simply does not apply to the defendant's knowledge about the person whose deception is intended.
[58] While courts have specifically made clear certain instances that have succeeded or failed to meet the nebulous threshold for materiality, the topic remains unresolved in large part, except in certain legal areas where intent manifests itself in an abundantly clear fashion, such as with the so-called perjury trap, a specific situation in which a prosecutor calls a person to testify before a grand jury with the intent of drawing a perjurious statement from the person being questioned.
[60] Though this defensive loophole slightly narrows the types of cases which may be prosecuted for perjury, the effect of this statutory defense is to promote a truthful retelling of facts by witnesses, thus helping to ensure the reliability of American court proceedings just as broadened perjury statutes aimed to do.