The Illustrated Guide to Criminal Law
Chapter 14: Do or Die
Duress pg 17: Thoroughly Miserable Millie
And Millie’s isn’t one of those states, so now she’s looking at jail time, for lying under oath.
The State making a point
THE STATE
Oh, and for her original drug charges, as well.
She kinda violated the terms of her cooperation agreement with the state.
The Lesson: never be useful.
Do your time, shut your mouth, the Law ain’t got your back.
I think the real lesson here is: Don’t break the Law.
also, if the threat was indeed serious enough it seems reasonable that Millie could have spoken to someone before testifying under oath.
Plus Millie had a choice based on the threat made – she could simply refuse to testify (breaking her cooperation agreement but not committing additional crimes) rather than perjuring herself.
Or she could have asked for witness protection.
On the other hand, I can understand the need to be so restrictive — you want to put the criminals away no matter what threats they make. Frankly, there could easily be NO extenuating circumstances permitted for perjury, and in fact every reason to make it far stiffer: if you don’t testify, you’re basically a co-conspirator in every crime for which they are being tried, about which you could testify.
Yeah, and you could take all of their friends who didn’t know anything, and punish them too! Because which is more likely, that they really didn’t know their friend was a criminal, or that they’re just covering for them. That’ll teach them for being friends with a dirty criminal!
Small grammar mistake: “Millie’s isn’t one of those states”
1. “Millie is isn’t”? There is an extra is in there that doesn’t belong
2. “Millie is not one of those states”? There should be an “in” in there somewhere
It should be “Millie [no ‘s] isn’t in one of those states” or “Millie’s not in one of those states”
Millie’s state is not one of those states.