Sunday, October 17, 2010

Why Don't the State Bars Enforce Ethics Rules Against Introducing False Evidence?

At yesterday's Equality Virginia legal seminar at the University of Richmond, during the course of the discussion of legitimate medical and mental health research in the context of litigation, the point was brought up about the fraudulent testimony and false research introduced in lawsuits by Christianist attorneys like Matt Staver and his kindred religious zealots at Liberty Council (an institution that I view as an ongoing blight on Virginia). Time and time again, the Christianists introduce evidence and false evidence from bogus "experts" some of which tracks to Paul Cameron. Staver has to know the proffered evidence and deliberately distorted studies are false. Cameron was thrown out of every legitimate association he once belonged to for fraudulent research and one federal judge even opined in a decision that the only fraudulent evidence before him was the testimony of Cameron. Yet Staver and others - including now Charles Cooper in Perry v. Schwarzenegger - continue to introduce the same false evidence. In Virginia, Rule 3.3 of the Code of Professional Responsibility provides in relevant part:
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Rule 3.3 Candor Toward The Tribunal
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(a) A lawyer shall not knowingly:
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. . .(4) offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer has offered material evidence and comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial measures.
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(d) A lawyer who receives information clearly establishing that a person other than a client has perpetrated a fraud upon a tribunal shall promptly reveal the fraud to the tribunal.
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The comments to the rule describe what constitutes remedial action:
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When evidence that a lawyer knows to be false is provided by a person who is not the client, the lawyer must refuse to offer it regardless of the client's wishes. . . . Upon ascertaining that material evidence is false, the lawyer should seek to persuade the client that the evidence should not be offered or, if it has been offered, that its false character should immediately be disclosed.
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Yet the introduction of bogus testimony held out as scientific fact (as opposed to the mere religious belief that it is under the most deferential analysis) goes on and on by Christianist counsel. When are the state bars going to start disciplining those like Staver who are knowingly seeking to work a fraud on the Courts time and time again with false testimony and false evidence? It's past time that the constant deference to religious based lies stop.

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