Perjury Should Be Punished -- Always - Dimond

Diane Dimond
Perjury Should Be Punished -- Always
Posted: 7/29/11 12:30 PM ET

Excerpt:

Let's talk about perjury -- a person taking an oath to tell the truth and then lying through their teeth. Perjury is illegal and one can be both fined and thrown in jail for it.

I don't know about you but my parents instilled in me a sense of honesty that makes me get the shakes at the mere thought of telling a lie after taking a sworn oath. I don't think I could do it. I would be like that person on Law and Order who suddenly blurts out, "Okay...I told my boyfriend I'd like to see him dead! I'm sorry!" when I really had nothing to do with the murder in question.

I recently witnessed what I believed to be an act of perjury while covering the Casey Anthony murder case in Florida. The apparent discrepancy will go unpunished, and that bothers me because it's the justice system saying, in effect, "Okay, never mind, that oath you took really doesn't matter."

Here's what I saw happen: Casey Anthony was accused of knocking out her 2 year old child with chloroform and causing her death by binding her airways with duct tape. She was also suspected of being the one who had conducted more than 80 searches for "chloroform" and "How to make chloroform at home" on the family computer in March of 2008. Her mother Cindy stunned court watchers last month when testifying that she was the one who had been at the home computer on the dates in question searching for chloroform. Cindy explained she had originally typed in "chlorophyll" and the computer had automatically taken her to "chloroform." . . .

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-dimond/perjury-should-be-punishe_b_912320.html?ref=tw