Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 8, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 August 1901 — Perjury in the Courts. [ARTICLE]

Perjury in the Courts.

Considerable attention has been attracted by the rather sensational statement recently made by the president of the lowa Bar Association, Mr. J. J. McCarthy, in relation to the amount of perjured testimony in our courts Was his indictmentment too sweeping, his conclusion too pessimistic? ExJudge John Barton Payne of Chicago is disposed to subscribe to Mr. McCarthy’s arraignment. Perjury, in the technical sense in which the term is used in legal text-books is not perhaps as common as the lowa lawyer asserts it is, but ex-Judge Payne admits that “false swearing does prevail to an alarming extent.” He blames both the attorneys and the judges for this grave state of affairs—the latter for "indifference, apathy, sheer unwillingness to probe to the bottom of a case on their own responsibility.”