“I, (state your name), swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”
This is the oath many people take under all sorts of circumstances. We see it all the time in court; notaries administer oaths when we sign documents from affidavits to mortgages loan applications. We even sign an oath when we are issued a traffic ticket and promise to appear in court without posting a bond to make sure we show up. Literally, our word is our bond. In days gone by taking an oath was important. It was a way in which a man or woman gave his or her word that everything they were saying was the absolute, unvarnished truth. However, it is my contention that the oath has become meaningless in the minds of many and honor is in terminal condition. Lying has become the norm. This has had an incredible impact on our society.
In court, we have long known, and pretty much accept, that criminal defendants lie; not all the time, but often enough that the sworn testimony of a defendant, absent some sort of corroboration, is automatically presumed to be a lie. Hey, they have a fairly good reason to lie, even under oath. They are facing jail or prison time. That does not excuse it, but it is at least understandable. Would I lie to keep a loved one from going to prison or death row? Yes, probably.
Interestingly, there has been a response to this situation beyond juries just not believing those accused of crimes. The response has been that some, not all, police now hedge the truth and sometimes just downright lie to make sure the defendant’s lies are countered. It stems from the guys in the white hats (the forces of good) doing whatever is necessary to make sure the guys in the black hats (the forces of evil) do not triumph with their lies.
The defense attorneys know their clients lie and with a wink and a nod allow them to do so. Fortunately, the defendant is not required to testify, so he does not necessarily have to get up on the witness stand, take the oath and lie. This does not prevent the defense attorney from representing the “facts” he knows not to be true to the jury. Prosecutors, in response, also with a wink and a nod, watch as police officers testify falsely in an effort to convict the bad guy. In the most egregious situations, prosecutors and defense attorneys suggest to their respective clients and/or witnesses exactly what needs to be said in the form of leading question interviews before trial. You know, the questions like, “If it happened this way, it would be a lot better for our case. Are you sure it didn’t happen this way?” The wink and the nod are simultaneous or immediately follow. The client/witness gets the hint and the testimony (sometimes only half-jokingly referred to as “testiphony”) follows. Again, I understand the motive, but the hackneyed expression “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions applies here.
Years ago I learned something from a sage member of the bar. He said, “Bill there is an incredibly important difference between what goes on out in the street and what happens in the courtroom. On the street, people look you in the eye and lie to you. In the courtroom it is completely different; they take an oath, look you in the eye and lie to you.” While the remark was thick with sarcasm, it was nonetheless proven to be true in my experience. There is another logical fact, at least in the criminal justice system, "All defendants lie. All police, prosecutors, Judges and defense attorneys are aware of this fact. All police lie. All defendants, prosecutors, Judges and defense attorneys are aware of this fact. From all of this lying, somehow justice is done."
In civil and criminal trials, everyone has accepted as pretty much fact that some expert witnesses are nothing more than paid liars who sell their opinions to the highest bidder. I don’t care what side of the fence you are on, no matter what the issue, criminal or civil; I can find you a very qualified individual with lots of degrees and experience that will testify for either side of the issue, given the appropriate application of enough cold, hard cash. So how do we rely on expert witnesses who can be bought?
I cannot help but wonder; how a system that is intended to find the truth manages to somehow accomplish the goal when everyone in it is lying. I consider those lying under oath, especially when a man or woman’s liberty, and possibly their life, is at stake to be particularly abominable and for whom there is reserved a special level of Dante’s Hell, but there are so many other instances where lying has become almost an accepted norm.
Do any of us believe a politician anymore? An entire internet business has been born as a result of lying politicians, and it makes no difference who it is, what party they belong to nor what office they hold or seek. Political fact checking is done by politifact.com and factcheck.org. They purport to be non-partisan and non-profit organizations with only an interest in establishing the truth of what politicians say. I use the term purport only because I have not researched each one individually. Opensecrets.org is a group that established itself to try to figure out what politicians have been bought, to what extent and by whom. This would seem to be a daunting task. The mere fact that these organizations exist at all is bad enough, but it actually gets far worse.
Each one of these organizations that is dedicated to telling us whether politicians are lying or telling the truth have had to subdivide their determinations into degrees. Politifact divides statements by politicians into “true”,” mostly true”, “half true”, “false” and” pants on fire!”. I applaud the fact that groups have been created to check on statements made by politicians. I also find it appalling that they are not only necessary, but they need to have different degrees of lies from none, through little white to full blown, liar, liar pants on fire. Is it any wonder that the former joke, “How can you tell a politician is lying? His lips are moving.” is no longer really a joke? Am I the only one bothered that the leaders of our country are believed to be a bunch of liars? Is it any wonder people do not flock to the polls at election time? Their only choice is the lesser of all evils, and the lesser is still pretty evil.
So that takes care of the courts and politics, but as they say on TV, “Wait, there’s more!” The internet is now full of emails being forwarded that have nothing to do with reality. They can spread like wildfire and linger for, well, decades. Not a day goes by that I do not get an email that purports to be some disaster or allegation against someone or some organization or warns us of a computer virus that will destroy our hard drives or turn our brains to a gelatinous substance. We have snopes.com to check on these falsehoods. I have no idea what it is that causes people to start, much less spread, this B.S., but they do it nonetheless. I guess it is just the online equivalent of getting 15 minutes of fame.
Speaking of 15 minutes of fame, a number of years ago I recall that there was a very young girl reported missing. At some point during the search an individual came forward and represented that he had witnessed the missing girl getting kidnapped. He described how she was placed, as I recall, in a [ubiquitous] white van (I still don’t understand why everyone is always looking for a white van.). After several days, the police started to notice inconsistencies in his story and, after some rather pointed questioning; the man admitted that he lied. I cannot recall any explanation, never mind a good explanation, as to why he did this, but it is yet another example of someone lying, “because they can.”
My last example is the forms we fill out in everyday life. Many of these forms are "sworn to." Take a look at a mortgage application, not only is there a place where you sign, but there is also a statement that everything on the application is true and correct. Occasionally, there are what I call "weasel words" like to the best of my belief or to the best of my recollection. You will probably note that the statement you sign also includes certain provisions of federal law that makes it a felony to provide a bank with false information. The same is true on an application for insurance. Yep, you can go to jail for lying and not just when you are in court.
Look at many of the loan applications that were made during the mid 2000's. A lot of mortgages were issued to people that were never going to be able to afford them, often because unscrupulous mortgage brokers had them sign applications on which their income, and other information was falsified to qualify for the loan. The idea was, housing prices will rise and you can refinance when the mortgage becomes burdensome. Unfortunately, the bubble burst. Housing prices stopped rising and people that had already made false statements on loan applications lost their jobs. The spiral downward was steep and swift. Many of these people are lucky they are not facing criminal charges, quite frankly.
How do we deal with a society in which lying has seemingly become the norm? Criminals lie. Police lie. Prosecutors lie (see the disbarred Duke Lacrosse Team prosecutor for an example). Politicians lie and people in general lie, often for the sole reason that they can. I shall endeavor to maintain my own personal honor and try my best in spite of it all and hope that people will recommit themselves to personal honor.
