19981117 Defenders of Clinton argue he should not be impeached

Defenders of Clinton argue he should not be impeached because he committed perjury

In Truth, Even Those Little Lies Are Prosecuted Once in a While

by William Glaberson

http://www.uiowa.edu/~030116/158/articles/glaberson.htm

Glaberson, William. 1998. "In Truth, Even Those Little Lies Are Prosecuted Once in a While." New York Times, November 17, 1998.

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A Florida postal supervisor is in prison for denying in a civil deposition that she had a sexual relationship with a subordinate.

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Defenders of President Clinton have argued that his accusers are overzealous in saying he should be impeached or subject to criminal charges on the grounds that he committed perjury when he denied in a civil deposition that he had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky.

But a review of more than 100 perjury cases in state and federal courts, and statistics on the number of perjury prosecutions brought around the country, show that people are prosecuted in America for what might be called small lies more regularly than the Clinton defenders have suggested.

With the House Judiciary Committee's hearings into the possible impeachment of the president set to begin this week. The president's defenders are expected to return to their theme. The president's lawyer, David Kendall, has said that "no prosecutor in the United States would bring a perjury prosecution on the basis" of the kinds of questions Clinton was asked about his sex life in the Paula Jones sexual harassment suit.

But interviews with lawyers, legal experts and with a woman who is serving a sentence for lying about sex in a civil case show that, far from being shrugged off, the threat of prosecution for perjury, even in civil cases, is a crucial deterrent in the legal system.

"Symbolically, the sword of Damocles hangs over every perjurer's head, and no one can know whether they're the perjurer that's going to be prosecuted," said Jeffrey Abramson, a former prosecutor and an expert on jury trials who is a professor of legal studies and politics at Brandeis University.

One statistic on perjury prosecutions has been widely circulated since the president's supporters began arguing that perjury was little more than a technicality seized upon by the president's enemies: Of 49,655 cases filed by federal prosecutors last year, only 87 were for perjury.

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Read the rest here – it is quite an eye opener: In Truth, Even Those Little Lies Are Prosecuted Once in a While