Police perjury
is the act of a
police officer
A police officer (also called a policeman and, less commonly, a policewoman) is a warranted law employee of a police force. In most countries, "police officer" is a generic term not specifying a particular rank. In some, the use of the ...
knowingly giving
false testimony
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."Perjury The act or an inst ...
. It is typically used in a criminal trial to "make the case" against defendants believed by the police to be guilty when irregularities during the suspects' arrest or search threaten to result in their acquittal. It also can be extended to encompass substantive misstatements of fact to convict those whom the police believe to be guilty, procedural misstatements to "justify" a search and seizure, or even the inclusion of statements to frame an innocent citizen.
More generically, it has been said to be "
ing under oath, especially by a police officer, to help get a conviction."
United States
When police lie under oath, innocent people can be convicted and jailed; hundreds of convictions have been set aside as a result of such police misconduct.
Some sources say that it is both a police and a prosecutorial problem and that it is a systemic response to the
fruit of the poisonous tree
Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") ...
doctrine, which was recognized in the
US Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point of ...
decision ''
Mapp v. Ohio''. Other authors have drawn a connection between perjury and an increased emphasis on the number of arrests and convictions made.
The extent of the practice is debated; journalists, activists, and defense attorneys have exposed numerous instances of false testimony, policemen and
police unions
The police are a constituted body of persons empowered by a state, with the aim to enforce the law, to ensure the safety, health and possessions of citizens, and to prevent crime and civil disorder. Their lawful powers include arrest and ...
, while acknowledging its occurrence, deny that it is widespread or systemic. The defense attorney
Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and former law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law and American criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law School, where he was appoin ...
argued, in the
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
and before a
congressional hearing
A United States congressional hearing is the principal formal method by which United States congressional committees collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. Whether confirmation hearings (a procedure unique ...
, that police perjury is commonplace:
As I read about the disbelief expressed by some prosecutors.... I thought of Claude Rains's classic response, in ''Casablanca
Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...
'' on being told there was gambling in Rick's place: "I'm shocked—shocked." For anyone who has practiced criminal law in the state or Federal courts, the disclosures about rampant police perjury
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."Perjury The act or an inst ...
cannot possibly come as a surprise. "Testilying"—as the police call it—has long been an open secret among prosecutors, defense lawyers, and judges.
In 1995, the ''
Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' reported that New York Police Commissioner
William J. Bratton had created a furor by saying that he agreed with most of Dershowitz's statement. The ''Globe'' quoted Richard Bradley, then-president of the
Boston Police Patrolmen's Association
The Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association (BPPA) is the largest of the police unions representing police officers in the Boston Police Department. As of 2020, it represents approximately 1,500 officers.
History
The BPPA was established in 1965 ...
: "I find it incredible that he would say that. Every day all over the country, police officers are testifying. Everyone realizes they are testifying under oath. If this was this much a problem, it would have come to light over the years." Bradley said that in 27 years on the Boston force he had never encountered the practice.
In a 1996 article in the ''
Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...
'', "Has the Drug War Created an Officer Liars' Club?", Joseph D. McNamara, the chief of police of
San Jose, said, "Not many people took defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz seriously when he charged that Los Angeles cops are taught to lie at the birth of their careers at the Police Academy. But as someone who spent 35 years wearing a police uniform, I've come to believe that hundreds of thousands of law-enforcement officers commit felony perjury every year testifying about drug arrests." He also noted, "Within the last few years, police departments in Los Angeles, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, Denver, New York and in other large cities have suffered scandals involving police personnel lying under oath about drug evidence."
In 2011, after finding a former police detective, Jason Arbeeny, guilty of official misconduct for planting drugs on a suspect, Justice Gustin L. Reichbach of the
New York Supreme Court wrote that he "thought
ewas not naïve, but even this court was shocked, not only by the seeming pervasive scope of misconduct but even more distressingly by the seeming casualness by which such conduct is employed."
Arbeeny was then sentenced to five years of probation and 300 hours of community service. Also in 2011, a former San Francisco Police Commissioner, Peter Keane, wrote that lying under oath was a "routine practice" for narcotics officers.
In 2019, the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), also called the FISA Court, is a U.S. federal court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) to oversee requests for surveillance warrants a ...
called out the
Federal Bureau of Investigation
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...
and the
National Security Division
National Security Division, or Bahagian Keselamatan Negara (BKN), is a senior grouping within the Malaysian government which meets infrequently. According to a United States Embassy telegram leaked by WikiLeaks in 2011, BKN is regarded as Malaysia' ...
of the
US Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
for dishonesty in applications for continuance of a wiretap of Carter Page; saying that it called into question the reliability of other evidence submitted by the FBI.' The practice was documented in a previous report released by the Department of Justice's Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, and was cited by the court.
Police officers who have been dishonest are sometimes referred to as "Brady cops." In ''
Brady v. Maryland
''Brady v. Maryland'', 373 U.S. 83 (1963), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established that the prosecution must turn over all evidence that might exonerate the defendant ( exculpatory evidence) to the defense. '', the US Supreme Court held that prosecutors are required to notify defendants and their attorneys of any favorable evidence, such as if a law enforcement official involved in a case has a sustained record for knowingly lying in an official capacity.
Remedies
A police officer's reputation for trustworthiness is an important asset to their effectiveness; police who have been caught lying to the court make poor witnesses, and previous convictions relying on their testimony can be vacated if their misconduct is pervasive. This can result in
termination
Termination may refer to:
Science
*Termination (geomorphology), the period of time of relatively rapid change from cold, glacial conditions to warm interglacial condition
*Termination factor, in genetics, part of the process of transcribing RNA ...
, and such terminations have been judicially enforced. About a perjured affidavit supporting a raid that killed two,
Houston Police Chief
Art Acevedo
Hubert Arturo Acevedo (born July 31, 1964) is an American police officer who is the interim chief of police of the Aurora Police Department as of December 2022. Previously, he was the chief of police of the Houston Police Department, Austin Pol ...
said "that's totally unacceptable. I've told my police department that if you lie, you die. When you lie on an affidavit, that's not sloppy police work, that's a crime."
Some suggest that narrowing or blunting the exclusionary rule may get rid of the incentive for police to lie to the court. That has happened to the extent that the US Supreme Court has recognized exceptions like the "
good faith exception
In United States constitutional law, the good-faith exception (also good-faith doctrine) is a legal doctrine providing an exemption to the exclusionary rule.
The exemption allows evidence collected in violation of privacy rights as interpreted fr ...
." Some argue that increased civil liability may have a
prophylactic
Preventive healthcare, or prophylaxis, consists of measures taken for the purposes of disease prevention.Hugh R. Leavell and E. Gurney Clark as "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life, and promoting physical and mental hea ...
effect on police misconduct. Others suggest that the ubiquity of video recordings, both by the police and by civilians, will operate to slow down the misconduct and to reverse the trend.
See also
*
Brady material
''Brady'' disclosure consists of exculpatory or impeaching information and evidence that is material to the guilt or innocence or to the punishment of a defendant. The term comes from the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case ''Brady v. Maryland'', in ...
*''
Brady v. Maryland
''Brady v. Maryland'', 373 U.S. 83 (1963), was a landmark United States Supreme Court case that established that the prosecution must turn over all evidence that might exonerate the defendant ( exculpatory evidence) to the defense. ''
*
Jencks Act In the United States, the Jencks Act () provides that the prosecutor is required to produce a verbatim statement or report made by a government witness or prospective government witness (other than the defendant), but only after the witness has test ...
*
Mark Fuhrman
Mark Fuhrman (born February 5, 1952) is a former detective of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). He is primarily known for his part in the investigation of the 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman in the O. J. Simpson murd ...
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Perjury
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."Perjury The act or an inst ...
*
Pitchess motion
A ''Pitchess'' motion is a request made by the defense in a California criminal case, such as a DUI case or a resisting arrest case, to access a law enforcement officer's personnel information when the defendant alleges in an affidavit that the o ...
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Poisoning the well
Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target per ...
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List of wrongful convictions in the United States
This list of wrongful convictions in the United States includes people who have been legally exonerated, including people whose convictions have been overturned or vacated, and who have not been retried because the charges were dismissed by the s ...
*
Witness tampering
Witness tampering is the act of attempting to improperly influence, alter or prevent the testimony of witnesses within criminal or civil proceedings.
Witness tampering and reprisals against witnesses in organized crime cases have been a difficul ...
References
Sources
*''
Boston Globe
''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...
'' November 15, 1995, Metro section, p. 1: "Bratton calls 'testilying' by police a real concern"
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{{Miscarriage of Justice
Police misconduct
Perjury
Testimony