For the lawyers, and anyone who wants to be Lawyer-for-a-day.

[lrd]

I was reading the commentary on the Martha Stewert case and came across this: http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/04.03.08a.htm

My question has to do with this statement:

What this law says is that if you tell a lie to a federal official, you can be put in prison. Let's think about that.

First, this is not a law just against perjury. There is no requirement that you be under oath. The lie does not have to occur in a courtroom or a government office. As stated, it does not even have to be a lie to a federal official-- it could be a lie to a friend.

Second, your lie does not have to cover up any crime. As stated, you would have to go to jail if you deliberately told the census taker you were a Methodist when you were really a Catholic. Or, as in Martha Stewart's case, it might be that you hadn't committed any crime, but federal police came by thinking maybe you had, and you were afraid what you had done might have been criminal too (even though it turned out it was not), because federal regulations are so intricate, and so you lied. Bang, you go to jail, if the Justice Department decides it doesn't like you or wants the publicity.

Third, no Miranda warning is going to help you. The idea of the Miranda warning is to stop you from incriminating yourself of your previous crimes-- a bad idea, by the way, but there you have it. Here, however, there doesn't have to be any previous crime. So you don't get a warning. You will be committing a crime once you lie, and at that point I suppose the policeman must give you a Miranda warning if he wants to ask you "Did you just lie to me?" and use your answer as a confession. But by then it's too late.

Thus, this a powerful law. Can you escape its reach? Well, you could always tell the truth, which is a good thing to do. But I don't think 5-year federal prison sentences for lying are appropriate, particularly since we don't enforce the law uniformly. (Note, by the way, that a lot of politicians would be in prison if we did enforce it--- and that's not just a joke--- they do tell material lies a lot about matters of public policy.)

I'm not sure what to make of this. What do you think?