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News Alert – Court Ordered Perjury
“Under penalty of perjury I declare that this is true and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief”
Because the federal government can legally require a person to provide sworn testimony the 5th Amendment includes an explicit guarantee that he (or she) shall not “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” (or herself.) But what if a sworn statement is provided as required, but the government challenges the accuracy of what it says?
The answer seems self-evident. Anyone who knowingly and willfully provides testimony under oath that contains provable misstatements of fact should expect to be charged with perjury. Indeed, most of us would be hard put to imagine any other government recourse. Which means, I suppose, that none of us is imaginative enough to get a job at DOJ — where prosecutors devised an amazing (make that unbelievable) alternative.
In just such a circumstance Justice Dept. attorneys recently sought — and were granted — a federal court order requiring a person whose testimony they claimed was factually inaccurate to change her sworn statement to say what they wanted it to say. The court order included a mandate that she sign the government-dictated statement under penalty of perjury and explicitly prohibited her from including any disclaimer. She was ordered to attest that the revised version was true and accurate to the best of her knowledge and belief!
Here’s a situation Joseph Heller would have loved. Even if the government is correct and she in error about the disputed facts, signing this second statement would provide irrefutable evidence that one or the other of her statements must necessarily have been falsely sworn. Q.E.D.
Then there is, of course, the exquisite irony that in compelling her to swear to this revised testimony — which all concerned are, of course, acutely aware is not her own — the court is actually ordering someone to commit perjury!
In cornering the defendant with this Hobson’s Choice the DOJ neatly sidestepped the twin challenges of having to prove both that her original testimony was false and that she could not have had a good faith belief that it wasn’t. Instead they simply charged her with contempt of court for refusing to comply with the order that she swear to a statement she neither made nor believed to be true.
Any who think this entire scenario is too bizarre to be true should look into US v. Doreen Hendrickson (Case No. 13-cr- 20371). Public records show that on July 25th of last year Mrs. Hendrickson was convicted of criminal contempt of court for which she was just sentenced on April 9th to a term of 18 months in a federal prison. Given 60 days to report, her attorneys are frantically working on an appeal while friends and family mount a campaign to get the Michigan governor and/or attorney general to intervene in defense of one of our fellow citizens against this blatantly unconstitutional attack by the federal government.
Incidentally, the court added a requirement that Mrs. Hendrickson must sign her name to the government dictated testimony, attesting that it is her own, within 30 days or report for immediate imprisonment.
The feds certainly seem determined to get this woman to officially and publicly recant. Perhaps it’s like the witch trials during the Inquisition where confession was thought to bring the accused some measure of cleansing redemption. Those were certainly the good old days for prosecutors — no need to twist the law into grotesque contortions when you can just twist the victim’s body on the rack.
CONTACT Pete Hendrickson at [email protected] to learn more.
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