Lately, for some reason, I’ve been thinking a lot about perjury. Or, more specifically, I’ve been thinking about people who, during a legal proceeding, hold their right hand up in the air and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but then who…don’t.
Who would even do that? Is there a self-respecting person out there (other than this guy, presumably) who could possibly be that brazen? What’s more, is there a normally reputable place of business that would even think of asking an employee to do it? Is this even in the realm of the possible, or am I talking crazy?
And what about an employer’s team of lawyers? Are there bona fide lawyers out there who know that a person they’re representing is lying and are fine with it? Is there—and I’m just spit-balling here—some kind of secret insider’s guide to lying under oath that would embolden a lawyer to tell his or her client that there’s a way to say untrue things on the stand without the penalty of perjury? One of the insider tips might be that if the client were to use certain code phrases immediately before a lie is told—something like “to my knowledge,” for example—it would be a free pass to lying. I mean, has a member of the bar ever said something like that to their client or is this, again, crazy talk?
Mind you, we’re just speaking hypothetically here, but to my knowledge, lying under oath is considered a no-no.
To my knowledge, it’s illegal even.
To my knowledge, if you’re lying about what you know to be true, then you’re not using the phrase “to my knowledge” correctly. To my knowledge, it’s still a lie.
A more nuanced, indirect approach to lying under oath might be a hypothetical organization’s choice in who answers questions on its behalf. What if the organization were to purposely choose someone with a limited amount of knowledge about whatever the issue might be? What if the hypothetical organization were to purposely keep that person in the dark, prepping them with a minimal amount of intel or even a false narrative?
After all, the person answering questions under oath would be telling the truth as he or she knows the truth to be. They’d be providing the information they were given. It would be their truth. It just wouldn’t be what the hypothetical organization whom they represent knows to be true—the authentic, unmitigated truth.
These are just a couple random, again, purely hypothetical thoughts I’ve had on this topic.
Thanks for listening. I won’t be taking comments at this time. However, in the meantime, I have a puzzle for you to ponder:
Does it look to you as if the green E and the two blue E’s were written by the same person?
