Perjury

The offence committed by one who, having taken an oath or affirmation, lawfully imposed, to testify truly, wilfully makes a material assertion believed to be untrue. Definitions that have been given in past years, and were well sustained by the law of their day, confine perjury to the violation of an oath taken in a judicial proceeding; and, for a long time after the penalties of perjury began to be extended to false testimony under an affirmation, and false swearing in legal proceedings not strictly judicial, there was hesitation in applying the term perjury to these. Recent legislation in many jurisdictions has so generally extended the word to include all wilful violations of the obligation formally and legally imposed to tell the truth, that we believe the definition may properly be restated, extending it to affirmations Numerous decisions, both in prosecutions for perjury, and in actions for slander in words supposed by plaintiff to import a charge of perjury, have established that swearing to what is false does not constitute perjury. To make out a case of perjury, there must have been an oath or affirmation in a case, and before an officer or tribunal authorized by law; the violation of a ■voluntary oath, or making an extrajudicial affidavit, is not perjury; and formerly, and in some jurisdictions still, it must be an oath taken in a court of justice. The ofiender must have wilfully made the statements charged; accidental or unintended errors are not punishable. And he must, at least, have believed the statement to have been untrue; that it should have been false in fact may not be necessary. Perjury is a corrupt, wilful, false oath, taken in a judicial proceeding, in regard to a matter material to a point involved in the proceeding. This oath must be taken before some officer or court having authority to administer it, and he must coniine his action to the authority given. And it is competent to show that the accused might have been led into a mistake; for then the oath, though untruthful, cannot have been perjury.

Hood v. State, 44 Ala. 81.

Perjury at common law is the " taking of a wilful false oath by one who, being lawfully sworn by a competent court to depose the truth in any judicial proceeding, swears absolutely and falsely in a matter material to the point in issue, whether he believed or not."

Commonwealth v. Powell, 2 Mete. [Ky.) 10; Cothran v. State, 39 Miss. 541.

Perjury is the taking of a wilful false oath by one who, being lawfully required to depose the truth in any judicial proceeding, swears absolutely in a matter material to the point in question. The testimony must not only be wilfully false, but it must be material to the issue. The prosecutor must prove that it is thus material; and it is also necessary that it should be alleged in the mdictment that the matter sworn to was material, or that the facts set forth as sworn to, and upon which the perjury is assigned, should be sufficient in themselves to establish the materiality.

Commonwealth V. Smith, 11 AUen, 243.

To constitute false swearing perjury, the oath must be required by law, or by a usage sanctioned by the courts Or some department of the government. But a mere ministerial officer cannot institute such usage, so as to bring such a case within the law. United States v. Babkock, 4 Mc Lean, 113. of congress a tribunal to settle controversies relating to claims to pre-emption rights, and therefore an oath administered in such a controversy, before the register alone, is extra-judicial; and, as perjury cannot be predicated of such evidence, an action of slander cannot be maintained for a charge of false swearing in such a proceeding.

Hall V. Montgomery, 8 Ala. 510.

An oath taken before a commissioner authorized to administer it, is an oath which, if wilfully false, would subject the defendant to be punished as for perjury.

United States V Nickerson, 17 How. 204.

The making, out of court, of a false affidavit, to be used on the hearing of an application for naturalization in a state court, the universal practice being to receive such affidavits in those proceedings, constitutes perjury, and is indictable as such in the courts of the state.

State v. Whittemore, 50 N. H. 245.

Perjury may be committed either by a witness swearing to a fact which he knows is not true, or to his knowledge of a fact, when he has no such knowledge. But rash swearing to what is not true is not necessarily perjury.

United States v. Atkins, 1 Sprague, 558; 9 Mont My Law Rep. n. s. 95.

Perjury is not committed by mere reckless swearing to what the witness would, if more cautious, learn to be false; but the oath must be wilfully corrupt. The proposition that an unqualified statement of what one does not know to be true is equivalent to a statement of that which one believes to be false may be nearly true, so far as the effect of the statement on others is concerned; but it is not a sound legal definition of perjury. There must be some fact falsely stated, with knowledge of its falsity, before there can be perjury.

United States V. Moore, 2 Low. 232.

If a witness, on liis examination, make a false statement, but afterwards correct it, so that his tesdmony is ultimately true, he is not guilty of perjury; and to charge him, without qualification, with swearing false in reference to that statement, is actionable.

Henry v. Hamilton, 7 Black/. 506.