Witness testimony is important in a variety of settings. Juries depend on witness testimony to reach a fair and impartial verdict in civil and criminal trials, and grand juries depend on witness testimony to indict defendants for criminal conduct. Thus modern laws of perjury are calculated to ensure that witnesses testify truthfully so that justice can be done in each individual case.
In the Middle Ages, the witnesses were the jurors, so the criminalization of false witness testimony did not occur until the sixteenth century when the idea of a trial by an impartial jury emerged. The first common- law prohibition against witness perjury criminalized false testimony, given under oath, in a judicial proceeding, about a materiali ssue. This definition was also incorporated into early American common law. 1
In modern times, every state prohibits perjury, as well as the federal government. 2 Most state statutes or state common law, in states that allow common-law crimes, define perjury as a false material statement (criminal act), made with the specific intent or purposely to deceive, or the general intent or knowingly that the statement was false, in a judicial or official proceeding (attendant circumstance), under oath (attendant circumstance). 3 The Model Penal Code defines perjury as a false material statement, that the defendant does not believe to be true, made under oath in any official proceeding (Model Penal Code § 241.1(1)). The biggest issues commonly encountered in any perjury prosecution are proving the validity of the oath, the defendant’s criminal intent, the materiality of the false statement, and any requirement of corroborative evidence.
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