What’s Wrong with our Courts

Yeah, what’s wrong. This is not asked as a question. This is a statement. I’ve been knocking around in the courts as a litigant more than my due share and have noticed some interesting things.

1.         Cases drag on for years, even decades. (Oh sure, we all know that). But why? Because…

2.         There are far too many cases. Way too many. And that’s because…

3.         Bad laws is one. Pigheaded officialdom is another. Some corrupt judges may be yet another. But there’s another very important one: You can lie and furnish false evidence in the courts with impunity. In other words, you can commit perjury till the cows come home, or till either you or your opponent in the case dies of old age. 99.99 percent chances are you will be unharmed.

Perjury

Perjury is when you lie in court, of course under oath. Even producing a fake piece of physical evidence (like a forged agreement) and swearing it’s real is perjury. You get caught committing perjury and get booked, right? Wrong.

If you get caught lying in court, it is the judge who has to file the complaint: this guy lied in my court. This means that the judge now becomes like any other plaintiff. He will also have to mount the witness stand in a court and give his statement. Then he will be cross-examined by the defendant’s lawyer.

No judge wants to undergo that. Finis. So no case is filed for perjury.

Thousands of cases are heard every working day in courts across the country.  It is a safe bet that in almost every single case at least one of the parties is lying. In too many cases one of the parties has built up his case on the basis of forged documents, planted evidence, false affidavits or witnesses-for-hire. He may lose the case eventually. But that’s a long time in the future. Thousands upon thousands of liars every day; no prosecution for perjury.

So why not go to the nearest courthouse and file a case – any case – on that guy whose face you don’t like, or that old woman who’s the owner of that prime piece of land…

Here are some examples (NONE of them relate to me, by the way).

Example 1: I’ve seen a forged will produced in a court which was so crudely done that even a one-eyed bat could see it was made up by patching together different pieces of paper with cheap, discoloured cello-tape. One piece had the old man’s signature, the other had the will typed on it. This case dragged on and on for years. Eventually one of the parties got a retired forensic scientist (at considerable expense) to show how and where the forging was done. When last heard, the case is still in the court, and the affected party has gone off to the UK in disgust. In the end the forger will merely lose his case and right to the property (which he is already occupying anyway). Will he suffer for lying and forging? Fat chance.

Example 2: A guy was recently acquitted by the Supreme Court in a murder case after being booked ten years ago. The case was held to be totally fraudulent. He’s free now, but after being arrested, “interrogated”, sent off on judicial remand (and life can be pretty tough in judicial remand; the older prisoners “welcome” the newcomer with a physical beating for starters). Then struggling to get bail. Then trying to raise resources to fight the legal fight which would drag on for ten years through the Sessions, High and Supreme Courts. Murder case lawyers don’t come cheap. This guy would certainly like to proceed against the people who lied against him and framed him. Can he? The answer is pretty obvious now. Meanwhile, those folks sleep easy, smug in the knowledge that they’ve taken away the best years of their enemy’s life, and ruined him financially to boot.

The Solution

Easy. Take away the provision for the judge to be the complaining party in a case of perjury. Let the victim be the complainant, the judge’s judgment sufficing as evidence that so and so has been lying or has given a fake document, instead of having the judge go on the stand to say so. If anyone aggrieved by a judge’s judgment can go in appeal in the normal course, so too can the litigant or witness do so, if the judge has called him a liar. What is the need for the judge to himself be a witness?

Once perjury has been proved, let the punishment be hefty enough. A heavy fine in ordinary cases, and imprisonment if the victim faced loss of life or liberty.

With this mechanism in place, there may be a slight surge in litigation in the beginning, when aggrieved victims finally take on their tormentors. Once the punishments start getting meted out, people will think twice before using the courts to settle scores or blackmail someone.

Now ask a lawyer to pick holes in the above.