On The Crime Of Perjury

The Crime of False Witness is a crime with a long history. There are provisions on it in the criminal laws all over the world. Because of the differences of legislation between countries, the conceptions of the Crime of False Witness are divided into two types: the conception with broad sense and the conception with narrow sense. The former refers to any false statements in litigation processes; the later refers to any action of false witness, false appraisal, false translation and goading another person to make false witness. The provision on the Crime of False Witness in Chinese criminal law differentiates from those in foreign criminal laws in many aspects.According to Chinese criminal law, the Crime of False Witness is that, during the course of criminal procedures, any witness, expert witness, recorder, translator purposely makes false testimony, false expert evaluation, false record, false translation with an intention to frame others or conceal criminal evidence in the circumstances which have an important bearing on a case.There are several crimes relative to the Crime of False Witness provisioned in the criminal law, such as the Crime of Fabricating Criminal Stories and Framing Others, the Crime of Defender's or Legal representative's Destroying Evidence or Forging evidence or Impairing to Bear Witness, the Crime of Impairing to Bear Witness, the Crime of Helping Others to Destroy or Forge Evidence, the Crime of ProtectingCriminals By Falsifying Evidence, the Crime of Protecting Drug-Criminals By Falsifying Evidence. It makes great sense theoretically and practically to make sure of the differences between the Crime of False Witness and the crimes mentioned above.Although, compared with the old criminal law, the provision of the Crime of False Witness in the new criminal law is a essential development because the essence of the crime, the infringe upon the state's jurisdictional power, is correctly recognized, the problems of the provision have not been solved completely and the provision should be improved in a scientific manner.