PERJURY (from the Latin peva rium), by the common law of England, is the offence of falsely swearing to facts in a judicial proceeding. To constitute this offence the party must have been lawfully sworn to speak the truth by some court, judge, or officer having com petent authority to administer an oath ; and, under the oath so administered, he must wilfully assert a falsehood in a judicial proceeding respecting some fact which is material to the subject of in quiry in that proceeding. In a legal sense, therefore, the term has a much narrower import than it has in its popular acceptation. A person may commit per jury by swearing that he believes a fact to be true which he knows to he false. It is immaterial whether the false state ment has received credit or not, or whether any injury has been sustained by an individual in consequence of it. The offence of perjury is a Misdemeanor.
The history of this offence in the com mon law is entirely dependent upon the history of the trial by jury. Where perjury is mentioned by Bracton and Fleta, they exclusively allude to the offence of jurors in giving a wilfully false verdict ; and as the jury appear to have been originally merely witnesses, speaking from their personal knowledge of the facts, and sworn to speak the truth, their misconduct in giving a false de cision might be justly treated as perjury. [Jura.] There is no trace in the statutes or in the reported proceedings of the courts, of any penal law against perjury in witnesses, as distinguished from that of jurors, earlier than the reign of Henry VIII.; the date of the introduction of the witness's oath to speak the truth, in use at the present day, is unknown, and no form of process for securing the at tendance of witnesses (except where they were added to the jury) seems to have existed before the reign of Elizabeth. (Julay.] These facts tend to show that the offence of perjury has received its present definite character by the corre sponding change in the functions of the jury. This change was complete in the
time of Sir Edward Coke, as he defines perjury nearly in the same terms in which it is described in more modern text-books. (3 Inst., 163.) A defendant in equity is guilty of per jury by false swearing in his answer to a plaintiffs bill. The defendant is in fact also a witness, for he is bound to answer on oath to the matter contained in the bill, and the plaintiff may read the whole or any integral portion of the defendant's answer as evidence against such defendant. In the case of an answer in equity, the offence of false swearing falls exactly within the definition given at the head of this article.
The punishments of perjury by the common law were, discretionary fine and imprisonment ; the pillory, which punish ment was abolished (by 1 Viet. c. 23) in 1837 ; and a perpetual incapacity to give evidence in courts of justice. As to the penalties for Perjury, see Lew, CRIMINAL, p. 205. There are many sta tutes by which oaths are required as a sanction to statements of facts under a variety of circumstances, and otherwise than in judicial proceedings ; and these statutes frequently declare that false swearing in such cases shall amount to perjury, and be punishable as such. The Commissioners on Criminal Law have pointed out the objections to provisions of this kind, and have suggested a mode of rendering the law upon the subject more precise by drawing a line of dis tinction between false testimony in courts of justice and false swearing to facts on other occasions. See Fifth Report, pp. 25 and 50.
By the 5 & 6 William IV. c. 62, de clarations may now be substituted for oaths in many extrajudicial proceedings.
?TH.1