We have become accustomed to public and private deceit.  We are numbed and dulled by it; it no longer surprises us.  To a large degree, this disease of national dishonesty can be placed at the door of our courtrooms, our judges and our lawyers.

There are no truths in a courtroom.  While science empirically measures facts beyond argument, the truths to be measured by a judge or jury cannot be quantified into lengths, times or volumes.  There is only subjective human perception, shadows of facts shaded by litigants to advance their respective cases.  It is, therefore, expedient for witnesses to lie, to knowingly advance false facts in order to "win."

How can this be possible?  Is it not the crime of perjury to knowingly offer false sworn testimony?  And is it not the duty of lawyers to knowingly prevent the advancement of perjurous testimony?  Such conduct is more than possible — it is commonplace in courtrooms and in our day-to-day lives.

Lawyers know this well, so courtroom perjury is employed without remorse or fear of punishment.  Although the crime of perjury exists, no matter how obvious, willful or injurious to another person the false testimony may be, there is rarely, if ever, a prosecution for perjury in a civil case.  The potential exception is the current Clinton- Jones-Lewinsky convulsion where the potential perjury was committed by someone microscopically scrutinized by national media whose transgressions are too public to sweep aside.  Before that, the only prosecution for perjury in a criminal case within anyone's memory was that against Mark Fuhrman, a former policeman whose hand was slapped with a fine and who is now a best selling author and public speaker.

Legal commentators and the public media decry the low esteem in which our system of justice is held.  Commissions are formed to study how to restore respect for the courts, for lawyers and for the law.  Weekly news magazines offer stories trying to explain how dishonesty has become so deeply imbedded in our social fabric.  Why, they ask, is the lie the weapon of choice in litigation?  

The answer is plain: There is no consequence to be suffered by the liar.  Lying and dishonesty are tacitly sanctioned by the very institution which purports to be the last fortress of truth: the courts.  Each time obvious perjured testimony is offered by a witness and a court by its silence fails to invoke a consequence for it utterance, the public perception of the integrity of the courts is lowered yet again and its cynicism increased.  As Frank Galvin tells the jury in his closing argument in David Mamet's screenplay for The Verdict, "We become tired of hearing people lie and, after a time, we be come dead."

Hopefully, somewhere, sometime soon a judge will hear a palpable lie spoke under oath in his or her courtroom and will stop the proceedings and cause the perjurer to be held accountable for the act, whether by referring the matter for prosecution or holding a hearing for contempt.  Such a single, isolated act of courage will sound a small but hopeful call to the end of our national infection of selfish dishonesty.  The tide may begin to be turned and truth restored to the American courtroom.