Legalizing Perjury

Or at least legalizing being an accomplice to perjury.

Attorneys who believe their clients have lied in court won’t be required to report their clients to the judge, under new rules adopted by the Washington State Supreme Court.

The attorney-ethics rule, which does require attorneys to try to persuade their client to tell the truth, is one of several changes adopted by the high court, which has spent a year reworking the Rules of Professional Conduct.

The rules take effect Sept. 1. They guide such things as attorney-client confidentiality, pro bono work and “maintaining the integrity of the profession.” Attorneys can face discipline or even be disbarred for violating them.

Some of the new rules echo a set of “model rules” by the American Bar Association in an effort to make attorneys’ ethical obligations more consistent from state to state.

But one Washington rule that’s different from the model rules is an attorney’s duty upon learning that a client has given false information in court.

Under the model rules, attorneys who learn that a client has lied and can’t persuade the client to come clean would have to report it to the judge — an approach favored by a Washington State Bar Association committee. But some criminal defense attorneys said they have a hard enough time trying to get their clients to trust them and don’t want to be in the position of having to reveal things that could get their clients charged with perjury and jailed.

Under the rule adopted by justices, attorneys must first try to persuade their clients to correct the misinformation. Failing that, they can withdraw from the case.

Now, we’ll have to wait until the RNS Legal Eagle, Meester David stops by to get his opinion, but this utterly makes my head both spin and steam.

For a lawyer to not be made to turn his client in for lying under oath deconstructs an essential part of our justice system: the ability for the jury to hear facts, and not whatever made up mumbo jumbo that someone who is facing prison can come up with.

A defendant already has the right to lie to his attorney, and provided that the attorney never finds out, the defnedant is OK. But now, if the defendant gets a hole punched in his lie and has to make up another one, the jury may never find out.

I bring this particular story up everytime the SCOW makes a stupid decision because it shows their mentality (or lack of one).

In 2001, during the Mardi Gras celebrations here in Seattle, a gentleman named Kristopher Kime stepped in to stop a group of black youths who were beating up a woman. The youths turned on him as a group and beat him unconscious while yelling racial epithets at him. He later died of his injuries. You can read the story here.

A number of people were convicted for assaults that happened that night, but one, Jerell Thomas, was caught on tape and convicted on murder charges for delivering the fatal blows to Mr. Kime. Sadly, his convitcion was later overturned and he had to be retried when the SCOW decided that if you beat someone to death, but didn’t actually intend to kill them, you can only be convicted of manslaughter. The new rule defining a beating death as not murder came about after a successful appeal in front of the SCOW from a man who stomped a 2 year old child to death.

Now imagine the rules these new rules dreamed up by the SCOW applied to murders by blunt force put together and you’ll understand why I have no confidence in the Washington State Justice system.

And why they shouldn’t expect me to have any.