DWI Criminal Defense Police Misconduct or Perjury

For a variety or reasons, police and crime lab workers sometimes cheat. Often, it is to save time or money. Other times, neglect or sloppiness is the problem. Sometimes, police officers embellish, exaggerate, or just plain lie.

This criminal misconduct overshadows and taints the State’s “forensic” test results that are offered against you. Your skilled defense attorney will know how to focus the jury’s attention on the false testimony or shoddy laboratory work and persuade the jury that you have been wrongly accused.

Perjury is the crime of intentionally lying after being taking an oath or affirmation (to tell the truth) by a notary public, judge, court clerk or other official. One of the most serious and, unfortunately common, mistakes a law enforcement officer can commit is to testify inaccurately.

Sometimes, police officers embellish, exaggerate, or just plain lie. Jurors and judges often tend to discredit all testimony of any witness, especially a police officer, who has been shown to have departed from telling the truth.

Showing the jury that a witness has committed perjury or changed his or her story (made a prior statement that is inconsistent with what the witness is now saying) is an important step in convincing a jury (or a judge) that the officer or lab technician is not worthy of belief on any issue.

Your defense attorney may ask the judge to tell the jurors that if they find that a witness lied, they can disregard the entire testimony of that witness.