Perjury and information weighting

Situations where a defendant is tried for perjury for lying in a civil tria l are considered. The perjury court uses two types of evidence in determini ng whether perjury took place: information that was available when the defe ndant testified in the first trial and information that only became availab le after the first trial ended. This paper concludes that perjury rules gov erning testimony given in civil trials should give greater weight to inform ation that surfaced after the defendant testified. This decreases a defenda nt's incentive to lie and to a lesser extent increases the accuracy of perj ury adjudication. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.