parados wrote:Tico,
If a prosecutor or a govt official tells a court they have some facts and those facts turn out to not exist, what would be the normal response of a court?
What would be the response if the court found out that the govt official acted as if those facts existed knowing full well they didn't have them?
There is a grey area there but if a govt official acts on a supposed fact, tells the court that fact exists and then refuses to show any evidence to the court I think there is little doubt that the court would consider it to be a lie on the part of the govt official.
No court is going to accept an argument that others must prove that the official lied. The burden of proof is with the govt. Unless that official can show they acted with a reasonable belief that what they were doing was legal they are going to face serious penalties.
Your argument is twisted like a pretzel.
First of all a Court does not regard the Prosecutor or the Defense Counsel as having the same status in a legal proceeding as a defendant or a witness. The former are officers of the Court and the latter are not.
If you're question is going to have relevance, it needs to focused on the hypothetical "government official" as either a defendant or a witness. In any realistic application of your hypothetical to the issues in question, George Bush can only be conceived of as either a defendant (which I'm sure is where you are leading) or a witness, and even here there are important differences.
If you are going to pursue this argument you need to select the subject of your hypothetical: prosecutor, witness or defendant, keeping in mind that it is a huge stretch to cast Bush as a prosecutor, or for that matter a witness.
If a defendant or witness testifies that a certain set of facts are true and they eventually are proven to be false, it is not ipso facto perjury. There is a difference, philosophically and legally between a mistake and a lie which rests on actual knowledge and intent.
If it was proven that the defendant or witness
knew the facts they claimed to be true were not than they indeed would be trouble, but this is a huge leap from your first question. In one the facts are proven to be false, and in the other it is proven that the defendant or witness knew them to be false.
This entire issue returns to whether or not anyone can prove that Bush knew these facts were false when he presented them to the American public as truth.
That they seem to have been proven false (make no mistake that in any defense of Bush, his counsel with be arguing that the fact that WMDs have not been found is not proof that they never existed or that there was never any reason to believe that they did) is not enough to establish that a) they were false and b) that Bush knew them to be false. The suggestion that it is reasonable to infer that since there were no WMDS that there never were and Bush knew this to be the case is ridiculous.
The issue of the defendant's refusal to provide proof that the facts he contends to be true are indeed true is wildly twisted in your argument.
First of all, the innocence of the defendant is presumed, not his guilt. If he is unable to provide evidence to back up his claims, he is not presumed to be lying. Of course if the prosecution is able to offer credible evidence that a) the facts were false, and b) the defendant knew them to be false, it would behoove the defendant to offer his own evidence (such as he might have) to contradict the prosecution.
Secondly, assuming this "refusal" to reveal evidence actually exists, a case can and will be made by the Bush defense team that neither Bush before the action nor they, post-action, need not reveal, in public, evidence that compromises national security. If the Court demands an in camera review of the evidence, we move into another avenue of debate.
Every court in the land, it is fervently hoped, will require that "others" prove Bush lied. The burden of proof is with the government
if the government is in the role of prosecutor. How a scenario around this status can be fashioned is beyond me. Let's face it, your hope and the hope of Debra is that the government (read GW Bush) will be the defendant, and given such a status, your argument is antithetical to our system of justice.
As is usual, the legal dilettantes on A2K have taken nuanced legal principles and attempted to not only apply them in the absolute, but to do so in a way that supports their political points of view.
There are very few, if any, legal slam dunks. The notion that reasonable inferences is one is beyond ludicrous.
Our system doesn't suspend
innocent until proven guilty because 30% of the population absolutely hate the president of the United States.
There are, without question, legal argument to be made in the prosecution of George W Bush, but unless someone is able to reveal facts of which, until now, no one is aware, it will be an uphill battle. To suggest we need only get the bastard before a Judge and it's lights out for W is idiotic.
A far more cogent question is what will happen if the Democrats are able to take the Congress in 2006?
The process to impeach and overthrow a president is infinitely more political than legal.
Given a sufficient majority, I have no doubt that the Democrats will impeach Bush, if for no other reason than evening the score. Unless new information is revealed, if he is cast out of office by the Democrats, my faith in the system and ability of principle to rise above politics will be gravely shaken.
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