Most justice systems, regardless of the governments in which they are based, recognize a distinction between accuracy and honesty. The penalties for unintentional inaccuracy in legal testimony and documentation are far less severe (and sometimes non-existent), compared to the penalties for deliberate, intentional dishonesty. This is also known as perjury, and in most justice systems, it's a crime.
People unintentionally give wrong testimony in courts all the time. Sometimes witnesses truly believe they saw something they didn't, either because they interpreted events incorrectly or, human memory being an imperfect mechanism, they're just plain remembering wrong. In the case of police testimonial, sometimes the witness is relying on failed technology, such as faulty radar detectors or inaccurate DNA samples.
If you say something on the witness stand during a court case that later turns out to be inaccurate, and the judge determines you truly believed it was accurate when you said it, this may discount your testimony in that particular case, but the judge can't legally charge you with perjury. This is because most legal systems acknowledge room for human error in legal proceedings and don't consider it criminal behavior.
If, however, the prosecution can prove that you knew you were lying when you gave the testimony, you can be charged with perjury, which is intentional dishonesty. This is criminal behavior. The law makes a distinction between the deliberate attempt at dishonesty and simply making a mistake, because perjury is an intentional attempt at manipulating the outcome of the case under false pretenses, verses just having the wrong information at hand. The former is criminally negligent, whereas the latter isn't.
This is further proof that accuracy and honesty are somewhat independent concepts, and that honesty and dishonesty both require deliberate intent.
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You also have to take into account people who choose not to discover the truth. They avoid the lie, but they do not pursue the truth either. In that way they can preserve their "unintentional" inaccuracy.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I get what you mean :) I did write a little about the ethical responsibility we have to be as accurate as we can here: http://deconstructinghonesty.blogspot.com/2011/03/accuracy-and-ethical-responsibility.html I don't know if that speaks to what you're saying though!
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