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I'm curious how a lawyer not being allowed to present as truth known falsehoods at trial is stopping an effective defense? Wouldn't the lawyer knowingly be committing perjury if they lied in court?

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they said it also applies to defendants testifying, so if question is

And then you shot her, correct?!

Answer: No I did not shoot her! I never did that.

And your lawyer knows it is a lie that you indeed did shoot her, it could be problematic at that point, depending on some jurisdiction.

I guess it depends if you think an effective defense should allow the guilty to go free?

Effective defence would allow the guilty to go free. (although “guilty” is a jury verdict so that is impossible but I presume you mean would be found guilty had more evidence prevailed). You can’t have an advocate that draws arbitrary lines at which they are not on your side advocating for you, what would those be?

Say someone says to their lawyer they shot the person but really they are covering for their wife even to mthe lawyer. The lawyer then hears them say in court they didn’t shoot (the truth) but the lawyer just knows they are saying something different now to what they said before. It could be that.

> ...although “guilty” is a jury verdict so that is impossible but I presume you mean would be found guilty had more evidence prevailed.

I'm not the author of the post referred to here, but I suspect that 'guilty' was intended to be read as 'actually committed the crime'.

To be clear, I support the principle that it is the acquittal of a perpetrator is far less of a miscarriage of justice than is the conviction of someone other than the perpetrator.

In this case I was using guilty in its common English usage, and not the specific American Jurisprudence usage.

You must mean clear cut cases too then. Not self defence etc.

I think the general principle is that defence lawyers aren't expected to contradict their clients' probably false testimony, and are perfectly entitled (encouraged, even) to deliver a "my client maintains the shot was fired by someone else, and nobody witnessed the shot" defence whilst being pretty convinced they fired the shot, but if they close with a series of factual claims about "Richie Bottoms" whilst knowing full well that name was made up on the spot by their client they could be in trouble. Doing their job properly means trying to persuade their client to stick to technicalities and avoid the "Richie Bottoms" defence because it'll fall apart, not patching the holes in it.

But the fact we're debating how open defence lawyers are supposed to be and there is jurisdictional variation is a good indication of why criminals might feel they're best served lying to their defence lawyer, and lying as elaborately as possible rather than just avoiding confessing. The potential consequences of telling the truth are much worse than merely having your public defender think you're a fool. Plus if you're intending to test whether your denials are believable before you use them in court, you won't get a better opportunity than a privilege-protected conversation with someone who's seen a lot of excuses...

That's not perjury. Trial attorneys are not under oath because that would conflict with their duty to advocate for their clients. Their duty not to lie to the court is a matter of professional ethics.

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