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What happens to people who knowingly falsely accuse others of crimes? I guess it varies from state to state. Do some just get a slap on the wrist and others fined for wasting government resources?
I think a great deterrent would be to sentence the accuser as the one he/she accused would have been.
In California its generally known as filing a false police report. A misdemeanor IF the district attorney will even file a case.
When I was a brand new officer, I got sent to a rape in progress. I get there, there is lady screaming from the bed and a man has a naked man, using a chair, pinned against the wall. She is screaming, "He raped me. He raped me." Over the top, grab him, hook him up, off to jail.
I sit down with the lady. I was sleeping, he broke into my house and raped me. Husband came home. I've never seen the guy before in my life. Please under stand this is the condensed version. My written statement was 9 pages long; double sided. I take the female to Highland Hospital for a Sexual Assault Exam. When all done, bring her back home. Now, ive been into this for about 14 hrs.
I head down to the jail and the suspect tells me he has been seeing this girl for 3 yrs. Yes, he knows she is married, but hell. Gives me permission to search his apartment. On the mantle are photos of them together, at Disneyland, with Micky Mouse Ears on. There are love letters from her, professing her love and how she was going to leave her husband, etc.
It is now about 20 hrs into this investigation. I am well into overtime and exhaustion. Not too mention the 4 or 5 other officers and crime scene technicians I have assisting me. I release the male and send him home. I go home and sleep a few hours, get up, and go back to the females house.
I just need to clarify a few things. You don't know him? Nope. Never saw him before. With husband sitting right there, I pull out the photographs. I arrest her for filing a false police report and making false emergency call. Both misdemeanors. The district attorney didn't file on her. Felt the other home issues would deal with it. So there friends is where your tax dollars go.
What happens to people who knowingly falsely accuse others of crimes? I guess it varies from state to state. Do some just get a slap on the wrist and others fined for wasting government resources?
I think a great deterrent would be to sentence the accuser as the one he/she accused would have been.
Making a false statement that someone committed a crime could be charged in different ways depending on how it occurred:
1. Making a false statement to the police.
2. Obstruction of justice.
3. Perjury, if the accuser gives testimony in a court either at trial or at a preliminary hearing.
Obviously, such behavior should be severely dealt with. I'm not convinced though that locking up every person with a long prison sentence is the solution to all our problems. I'd like to know what was the motivation for the false accusation. Motivation should play a great role in what sentence is imposed on such an offender. The type of crime should be a factor.
It should always be kept in mind that many people falsely accused of crimes incur large monetary expenses for an attorney, time lost from work, and other pecuniary losses. The false accuser should be expected to be ordered to reimburse these costs with interest. Putting someone in jail may make this task difficult, if not impossible.
The other concern I have is that some people think punishing the false accuser somehow makes up for what was done. In each such case, authorities should examine how the system worked. Was the false accusation discovered before the falsely accused person did any jail time? The system ought to work in a way that it is able to ferret out false accusations. When it doesn't than its time for some serious introspection and analysis.
i think they should be prosecuted fully, with maybe the exception of children or teenagers that lie...then if there is an adult behind their lies, the adult should be prosecuted...but it's pipedream
It's a difficult issue, because some people have been freed only after the false accuser recanted, or came forward and admitted the original lie.
We don't want to discourage false accusers from coming forward and getting innocent people released. We want to give them at least some incentive to be honest, even after a wrongful conviction has been handed down. At the same time, it does seem like a gross injustice for their crimes to go unpunished.
Our fundamental problem is the use of bad evidence, or prosecutors going to grand juries with no actual evidence aside from the false testimony. Culturally, a lot of people (and hence, a lot of grand jurors and trial jurors) don't even seem to be aware that false accusations (especially from younger children) actually exist.
But like the old saying goes, if the only evidence you have is some uncorroborated testimony, then you don't really have any evidence at all.
Prosecutors, jurors, and judges need to be educated in this very basic principle. Based on cases we've seen in recent years, many of them either forgot it, or never learned it in the first place.
With the way the legal system is, the women would most likely not be prosecuted and let off easily.
I believe false accusers should face life or capital punishment for ruining somebody else's life. The person might be alive on the outside, but the person's really dead on the inside and to the world because their life was ruined due to a lie.
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