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Yes, Counselor, I'm a Liar
July 19, 2002
by John Bloom
One of the most common things you'll hear a trial lawyer say is, "We know he's a liar because he already lied." In other words: if you lie about one thing, then your whole testimony is suspect.
Lawyers apparently believe this. They stake their whole reputation on it. They hammer away at witnesses with one of their favorite questions: "Why should we believe you now if we couldn't believe you before?"
The only reason this bothers me is that these men and women- -the attorneys--are supposedly the most highly educated and specialized truth-seekers the nation can train. They all have a minimum of seven years of higher education. They're sworn to an ethical standard that's supposedly greater than everyone else's. And yet they have these curious mythologies that are so simple- minded as to make me think they're either naive or stupid.
Everything we know about human nature, since the beginning of time, tells us that people lie selectively. A man who lies about his income--making it lower or higher to fit the expectations of the listener--might be perfectly reliable if asked about the price of his car. A woman who lies about her heart--insisting she still loves someone when in fact she's lost interest--could be quite capable of revealing the complete truth about the time she shoplifted a fifty-dollar sweater. There are people who lie to enhance themselves, people who lie to debase themselves, and people who lie to keep others off balance. Take away those motives, and they're as likely to be truth-tellers as anyone else.
In other words, the whole premise that's frequently posed to a jury--"You know he's lying about this because he lied about that"--is silly. And yet an entire armada of lawyers and judges put it forth every day as gospel.
The most famous recent example, of course, is Bill Clinton's lie about having sex with Monica Lewinsky. It was considered so egregious that he was actually disbarred for a period of time, and it was used as evidence that the man was fundamentally untruthful. And yet, on the scale of fibs, telling a lie that might prevent the wrath of your wife may rank in the 99th percentile of common everyday falsehoods.
Men will lie about why they forgot to pick up orange juice at the grocery store, just to avoid spousal rage, and they'll lie incessantly about sexual feelings ("Yes, your body type is the only one that appeals to me"), so what are the odds of a man lying about getting a quickie in his office? That would be pretty near 100 per cent, I'd say, especially since the original lie-- the infidelity--can only be protected by the secondary lie--the denial.
It's frightening to think that divorce lawyers--to use the most obvious example--don't understand this. If we started prosecuting people for perjury in divorce actions, the legal system would collapse of its own weight. The man is going to say that, yes, he took Tiffany to Florida, as the credit card receipts indicate, but nothing happened. She's just a friend. As long as this guy does not lie about his income and personal assets, any smart judge is going to let that slide and assume that one thing--lying about sex--has nothing to do with the other thing--lying or not lying about your personal wealth.
But if you switch to a police investigation or a criminal trial, you find this theory of the "Once A Liar, Always A Liar" theory in full play. The only purpose of a preliminary examination or a civil deposition is for the opposing lawyer to try to get the person to lie. If the witness lies about even the smallest thing--usually something embarrassing or shameful--then the lawyer will use that to say, "Well, he's a proven liar. He must have pulled the trigger, because he says he didn't pull the trigger. And as we know, he already lied about having pornography on his hard drive."
The implication is that, if a man has even one secret area of his life, then he's going to tell all kinds of needless lies to a jury--an idea unsupported by what we know of life. Different men have different vices. Is it really the case that a pickpocket who lies to protect his livelihood will also lie to send an innocent man to the gas chamber?
I'll even go farther. An habitual liar can sometimes make an excellent witness. An habitual liar has made a decision to go through life trying to get advantages--whether he actually gets those advantages is another matter--and so if he happens to be around when a crime is committed, and he sees no advantage in it for himself, nothing that will make him seem important, no grudge against the perpetrator, he'll simply . . . tell the truth. It doesn't matter how far you go back into his past, exposing this or that lie--without some motive, he's a natural truth-teller.
The American lawyer, as currently trained up in the vagaries of legal truth, is like an initiate in a secret guild of blind seers, answerable only to their own curious notions of right and wrong. They should read more Dostoevsky, or at least James M. Cain. They should be expected to know more about the human condition than their narrow cult allows.
© Copyright 2002 United Press International and John Bloom