In Part One I referred to how Pagosa Daily Post articles by John Tures and Richard Donnelly, describe two related aspects of our contemporary society: loss of religious faith, and hyper-partisan politics. I then chronicled the religious context of telling the truth.
Part Two suggests that Tures and Donnelly have each revealed a component of the flaw in the theory that divine retribution in an afterlife encourages honesty in this one… and the consequences to society.
English King Henry VIII’s separation of England from the Catholic church had significant ripple-effects throughout their society — including in the legal system. As early as 1695, witnesses in English courts were permitted the option of “affirming” to tell the truth rather than “swearing” to the Christian deity.
The English option of not swearing an oath before God prior to court testimony was adopted by colonists in America, and continues to this day. In every real-world (as opposed to Hollywood) court proceeding I’ve ever experienced, witnesses raise their right hand and “Swear or affirm the testimony you are about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth!” — period. No hand on the bible, or “so help me God” — though I have heard some witnesses add that additional “God” phrase on their own.
So… are there consequences of removing fear of divine retribution from the requirement to tell the truth under oath?
I suggest there are.
Tures describes falling numbers of those who claim religious beliefs, particularly among younger generations. I can speak from experience that witnesses lying under oath became disturbingly more common over my nearly 40-year litigation career.
I’ll relate an anecdote to illustrate how telling the truth under oath seems to mean little to some of the “younger generation”. Shortly before I retired (2017), in one of my last cases, the defendant was accused of stabbing the victim while they were both at a social gathering.
The evidence included a cell-phone video of the defendant stabbing the victim. Yet two friends of the defendant testified under oath at his trial for the stabbing charge that they saw the whole event and he never stabbed anyone.
While awaiting the verdict, I was conversing with the victim about how the defendant’s friends could so blatantly commit perjury, to which the victim responded, “I would do the same for my friends!”.
The victim, who was nearly killed by the defendant, saw nothing wrong with two witnesses lying under oath to (try) to help the defendant get away with the stabbing. All involved were in their early 20s. (I say ‘try’ because the jury returned a guilty verdict — preferring to believe what they saw with their own eyes on the video, and evidence of the victim’s wound, rather than the perjurers’ testimony).
A well-known example occurred in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse for shooting three people who were attacking him during a riot in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020, which I wrote about here.
In that case, one of the victims (Gaige Grosskreutz) originally told the jury, under oath, that Rittenhouse shot him without provocation. It was only during cross-examination by the defense attorney, after being confronted with irrefutable video evidence to the contrary, that Grosskreutz admitted the truth — that he was shot after first pointing his own pistol at Rittenhouse.
Grosskreutz knew the video would reveal the truth, yet perjured himself anyway. Why? That brings me to Donnelly’s description of political hyper-partisanship.
As I pointed out in my article about the unethical conduct of the Rittenhouse prosecutors, that case was based on politics rather than law. Those prosecutors knew the truth, and knew Gosskreutz would lie under oath, yet called him as a witness anyway in pursuit of their political agenda. Apparently neither Grosskreutz, nor the prosecutors, were concerned with burning in hell in their afterlives for their actions in this one.
Criminal prosecution in pursuit of a political agenda, based on perjured testimony, may have reached a new level in the New York trial of Donald Trump. That case hinged largely on the word of a convicted perjurer (and admitted thief) disbarred lawyer Michael Cohen.
In my long career as a prosecutor, one principle that was a given among reputable, ethical, prosecutors is that you never put a known liar — particularly one who has been convicted of perjury — on the witness stand, for both ethical and practical reasons. As a prosecutor, when you put a witness on the stand you are, in theory, vouching for their credibility. If a prosecutor loses credibility in the eyes of the jury, they lose the case. At least that’s how it was back in my day.
There has been ample description in the media, by highly-qualified experts, of how the Trump prosecution has no basis in law, or ethics, whatsoever — that it is a purely political ‘show trial’ like those that occur under corrupt regimes. I agree, but I’m not going to rehash that sad reality.
My point here is that those prosecuting Trump relied on there being a significant segment of our citizens (and jurors) who find nothing morally wrong with convicting Trump on the word of a convicted perjurer — if it furthers a political agenda. Those very sort of Orwellian hyper-partisans encountered by Richard Donnelly at a backyard cookout.
In a 2013 article that appeared in the Washington Post, an atheist professor Herb Silverman wrote:
“Atheists are the only ones who say unequivocally that atheists don’t go to heaven.”
The American Humanist Association — whose motto is “Good Without God” — advocates “progressive values and equality for humanist, atheists, and freethinkers”. Consider the progressive agenda of those supporting the prosecutions of Rittenhouse and Trump based on perjured testimony.
Progressivism, and atheism, are among the core principles of Marxist doctrine. “Religion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically…
— Bukharin & Preobrazensky, The ABC of Communism
If you study the history of Marxism, as advocated by Vladimir Lenin in the beginning days of the Soviet Union, you will learn that wilful deceit was a critical component in achieving his goals.
A lie told often enough becomes the truth.
— V.I. Lenin
It now seems politics is substituting for religion as an article of faith among too many in our society. The result is we get a travesty prosecution of a the leading political opponent of the party in power. That is the correlation I see between John Tures’ lament about loss of faith, and the political hyper-partisanship described by Donnelly.
With so many people having replaced religious faith with political partisan-ship, Tures’ plea for “solutions to what ails society” by acting in accordance “with our belief systems” is wishful thinking. Particularly if, as described by Donnelly, hyper-partisans view their political opponents as “what ails society.
Abraham Lincoln’s admonition to follow the “better angels of our nature” came at the end of our Civil War. To achieve Tures’ hope, history suggests we may first have to experience calamitous upheaval of our society.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.