LAPD Perjury Case Should Make Us All More Critical of Police Testimony
Three LAPD officers were charged with perjury Tuesday based on a videotape that surfaced contradicting their testimony about seeing a suspect toss a baggie of cocaine. The video also appears to depict the officers agreeing to "doctor" their police report to implicate the suspect wrongly.
No one knows the extent to which police lie in their reports and testimony. But thousands of people get convicted each year based on uncorroborated police testimony. Prosecutors, judges and juries often accept officers' stories uncritically, assuming their word should always be believed over that of criminal suspects.
Had a hidden camera not captured the truth in this case, the defendant likely would have been wrongfully convicted. As it is, the judge dismissed the case after the video surfaced at trial.
It's rare for cops to get prosecuted for perjury. Stated in Penal Code 118, California perjury law makes it a felony willfully to make false statements under oath. To prevail in this case, prosecutors will have to prove that the officers knew their testimony was false and that the testimony was likely to affect the outcome of the trial.
We shouldn't glean from this unfortunate case that all cops are dishonest. But what we all should do is evaluate an officer's story, especially an uncorroborated story, with a healthy dose of skepticism...especially before we convict and jail someone based on it.
