What happens if the witness to a crime is a fraud?

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  • What happens if the witness to a crime is a fraud?

    i have a situation where my character goes to prison based solely on a witness's testimony and the witness later turns out to have lied on the stand. what happens to this lying witness at this point? also, is the character that went to prison automatically released?
    One must be fearless and tenacious when pursuing their dreams. If you don't, regret will be your reward.

    The Fiction Story Room

  • #2
    Re: What happens if the witness to a crime is a fraud?

    There have been several cases like that.

    A retrial might be ordered, but the convicted guy might still stay in jail until the retrial unless he gets bail.

    The guy who committed perjury would be prosecuted, but he might get bail, so wouldn't go to jail automatically.

    Also, perjury might be incredibly hard to prove for intent ... even if you prove that I really didn't see Bobby gun down Jimmy that night, I would argue that the guy I saw looked the spitting image of Bobby ... so why is it my fault if I got them mixed up? I stuck my neck out to help the police by pointing out the guy who looked right in the line up ... why should I get prosecuted just because I made a minor mistake? Could you really prove that I lied on the stand .. or just that I was mistaken?

    On the other hand, it is getting easier to prove perjury. There is a high-profile case here in Australia at the moment (she just got convicted yesterday) were it was inevitable .. once they get access to your credit card receipts, security camera footage from where your car is garaged, etc, they easily proved that she wasn't anywhere near where she claimed to be.

    It didn't help that the guy she perjured herself for (an ex-judge) had finally admitted his guilt either!

    In any case, the poor guy in jail probably wouldn't get any compensation unless the government was somehow complicit in the perjury .. they did the right thing.

    There have been cases where the government knew about the perjury and did nothing ... a high profile case recently was were an informant for the FBI gave evidence against a fellow criminal in a murder trial which led to a conviction. The informants FBI handlers knew that he was giving fake evidence, yet didn't tell the defence, the prosecution or the court, because that would have exposed the informant as being an informant.

    The guy's conviction was later overturned and he got a hell of a lot of compensation.

    Mac
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