The young man sitting in my office faced charges of
marijuana possession. The police had noticed
the weed in his car during a routine traffic stop. My client insisted that the weed wasn’t his
and that he had no idea how it had gotten in his car.
“Is the car titled in your name?” I asked.
“Yes, it’s my car and I don’t let anyone else drive
it,” he asserted.
“Do you keep it locked when you’re not driving it?”
“Yes, and nobody has the keys but me.”
“Do any of your friends smoke pot?”
“Absolutely NOT!”
“Well, now, Mr. Jones.
I believe you when you say the pot wasn’t yours, but do you think we
have much of a chance selling this to the court? I mean, it’s your car. You don’t let anyone
else drive it and you keep it locked when you’re not driving it. None of your friends smoke pot. How’re you gonna explain how the pot got in
the car?”
On due reflection, my client decided that even he
didn’t believe his story. Just moments
earlier, he was ready to place his hand on the Bible and swear that it wasn’t
his pot. In the end, it wasn’t his
concern about the morality of lying that slowed him down. It was the
realization that no one would believe his lie.
If requiring a witness to take an oath doesn’t deter him from lying, why
administer oaths?
Until 1985, North Carolina law defined an oath as a
“token of the engagement to speak the truth and
. . . that if (the witness) should swerve from the truth, he may be made
liable to that vengeance which he has imprecated on his own head.” In addition to swearing oaths in court, our
laws also require notaries to obtain an oath when they notarize certain
important documents. Affidavits,
petitions, and other such documents contain the language “sworn to and
subscribed before me.”
In a 1970 Fayetteville case, a patient sued her
psychiatrist for false imprisonment when he had her committed to a mental
hospital. The court ruled that the
doctor’s failure to actually take an oath when he signed the commitment
petition was a violation of the patient’s right to due process and subjected
the doctor to liability for false imprisonment.
A few weeks ago, our appellate court again addressed
the issue of administering oaths. The
biological mother of a baby boy signed a “relinquishment” placing the baby for
adoption. Later, she changed her mind
and wanted to retrieve her son. She
argued that the document must be made under oath and that the notary had failed
to administer an oath to her.
While the notary admittedly did not administer an
oath, the adoption agency social worker had read the entire document to the
mother – including the signature line which stated “I, . . . being duly sworn hereby sign this
document. . . .” The court held that
reading this language out loud to the mother satisfied the mandate that the
document be signed under oath.
Despite this ruling, the court cautioned notaries that
“the failure to administer an oath . . .
may result in a defective notarization.
Should this occur, the document .
. . may be invalidated and the underlying transaction voided.” To administer the oath, the notary must
require a “vow of truthfulness on penalty of perjury” while invoking a deity or
using any form of the word “swear” or “affirm.”
So why does the law require oaths in connection with
important documents and courtroom testimony?
Researchers have found that in a 10 minute conversation most of us will
tell about three lies. Children begin
lying by the age of 2 or 3. Six year
old kids typically lie every 90 minutes.
Clearly, we’ve become a “generation of liars.” Just as clearly, the court can’t throw all of
us in jail. Lawmakers have decided to
reserve that punishment – and the jail cell – for those who lie under oath.
The law defines
“perjury” as giving a false statement “under oath” concerning a material
fact. Perjury is a felony punishable by
a fine and imprisonment. Many rich and
famous people have been convicted of perjury.
Martha Stewart, head of the “It’s A Good Thing” empire ; Marion Jones,
world famous runner; L’il Kim, popular rap star; Michael Deaver, aide to
President Reagan; and John Mitchell, U.S. Attorney General under Richard Nixon
all endured fines or imprisonment for lying under oath.
Scientists are exploring ways of using MRI’s and other
equipment to detect the liars amongst us.
Most certainly, other geniuses will work just as diligently to “beat”
any technology devised to identify falsehoods.
Meanwhile, I probably need to confess that in my dealings with my
pothead client, I was less than honest.
The truth is that I didn’t believe him when he denied the pot was
his. I think that was the only lie I
told during that 10 minute conversation.
Thankfully, I wasn’t under oath at the time.
