Perjury in civil depo?

District of Columbia, under the jurisdiction of a civil case filed in the State of New York.

Hello, would appreciate thoughts on the following scenario. During a civil deposition, following a break, witness is asked by opposing counsel if he "talked" with his attorney during the break.

Witness was confused and responded "no" because he thought that he did not need to testify about privileged conversations with counsel.

[Witness had a brief exchange with his attorney on the way in and out of the restroom (attorney told witness he was doing a good job, and gave some general question-answering pointers, etc.) Nothing material to the case discussed.]

During the next break, witness then asked his attorney if he should correct his earlier testimony and counsel responded "no, it's not worth going back and correcting, don't worry about it, but if we had it to do all over again you could have just said 'yes,' speaking to me is nothing to be ashamed of."

Is said witness at risk of prosecution for perjury? If so, what would the penalty imposed likely be? It would be first offense and the witness certainly had no intention of defrauding; he was only nervous and trying to remember all of the rules "you can answer this, you can't answer that," etc.

As the case was between the witness' employer and another party, he had absolutely nothing to personally gain or lose depending upon the outcome of the case, he was only there to testify at the request of his employer.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

lr123 said:

District of Columbia, under the jurisdiction of a civil case filed in the State of New York.

Hello, would appreciate thoughts on the following scenario. During a civil deposition, following a break, witness is asked by opposing counsel if he "talked" with his attorney during the break.

Witness was confused and responded "no" because he thought that he did not need to testify about privileged conversations with counsel.

[Witness had a brief exchange with his attorney on the way in and out of the restroom (attorney told witness he was doing a good job, and gave some general question-answering pointers, etc.) Nothing material to the case discussed.]

During the next break, witness then asked his attorney if he should correct his earlier testimony and counsel responded "no, it's not worth going back and correcting, don't worry about it, but if we had it to do all over again you could have just said 'yes,' speaking to me is nothing to be ashamed of."

Is said witness at risk of prosecution for perjury? If so, what would the penalty imposed likely be? It would be first offense and the witness certainly had no intention of defrauding; he was only nervous and trying to remember all of the rules "you can answer this, you can't answer that," etc.

As the case was between the witness' employer and another party, he had absolutely nothing to personally gain or lose depending upon the outcome of the case, he was only there to testify at the request of his employer.

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

Click to expand...

**A: no big deal. The witness did not fully understand the procedures.

Perjury is far too common, but is a very difficult thing to prove, and prosecutors rarely seek to convict on perjury.

To be perjury, the matter has to be not only false, but intended to be false and also material and relevant. One of the reasons Bill Clinton was not "convicted" in his impeachment trial for denying that he had a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky when he was asked about it during the Paula Jones deposition was that his affair with Lewinsky was not material to whether he did or did not proposition Jones and thus he did not commit not perjury according to some noted legal scholars. The false testimony was found to be contempt of court.

Get a good night's sleep. But be assured that if you later were to testify at a trial, the lawyer would cross examine you on that point to try to convince the jury that you gave an incorrect answer under oath, and if you did so at the deposition, why should the jury believe your answers now....