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Cover of: Perjury versus Truth Revelation: Quantity or Quality of Testimony
Winand Emons

Perjury versus Truth Revelation: Quantity or Quality of Testimony

Section: Articles
Volume 161 (2005) / Issue 3, pp. 392-410 (19)
Published 09.07.2018
DOI 10.1628/093245605774259282
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Summary
Witnesses often gain by slanting testimony. Courts try to elicit the truth with perjury rules. Perjury is not truth-revealing; truth revelation is, however, possible. With a truth-revealing mechanism the judge will get little testimony because the defendant will not present witnesses with unfavorable news; yet the testimony is of high quality. Under perjury the court gets a different amount of testimony with lower informational content. A court striving for precision prefers truth revelation to perjury; chances for the defendant to prevail are the same. Truth revelation thus dominates perjury even when the different quantity of testimony is allowed for.