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4.2.12
WC: 191694

Historically I think we can all agree that false statements have considerable variation and
degree. The core concept of perjury grows out of the Ten Commandments, "bearing false
witness," a term that consisted in accusing another falsely of a crime. Clearly the most
heinous brand of lying is the giving of false testimony that results in the imprisonment of
somebody who is innocent. Less egregious, but still quite serious, is false testimony that
results in the conviction of a person who may be guilty, but whose rights were violated in
a manner that would preclude conviction if the police testified truthfully....The least
culpable genre of false testimony are those that deny embarrassing personal conduct of
marginal relevance to the matter at issue in the legal proceeding.

I then tried to place Clinton’s false statements in their proper place along this continuum.

I think it is clear that the false statements of which President Clinton is accused fall at the
most marginal end of the least culpable genre of this continuum of offenses, and would
never even be considered for prosecution in the routine cases involving an ordinary
defendant.

I then blasted the Committee for having never conducted hearings on the corrosive problems
never conducted hearings on the corrosive problem of police perjury—"testilying."

If we really want to reduce the corrosive effect of perjury on our legal system, the place to
begin is at or near the top of the perjury hierarchy. If instead we continue deliberately to
blind ourselves to pervasive police perjury and other equally dangerous forms of lying
under oath, and focus on a politically charged tangential lie in the lowest category of
possible perjury, hiding embarrassing facts by evasive answers to poorly framed question,
which were marginally relevant to a dismissible case, we will be reaffirming the dangerous
and hypocritical message that perjury will continue to be selectively prosecuted, as a crime
reserved for political or other agenda-driven purposes.

I then warned that:

[H]istory will not be kind to this committee. History will not be kind to this Congress. I
think this committee and this Congress will go down in history along with the Congress
that improperly impeached Andrew Johnson for political reasons.

Following my testimony, Chief Judge Gerald B. Tjoflat, of the United States Court of Appeals for
the 11th Circuit, was asked to comment about the different types of perjury I had discussed. He
replied that “perjury is the same, regardless of the circumstances.” I then responded to Judge
Tjoflat’s view:

I think this committee is doing a terrible disservice to the rule of law and to the sanctity of
the oath by trivializing the differences, as Judge Tjoflat said in one of the most

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