Can perjury apply to arbitration proceedings? Can guilt for the crime of perjury apply outside of judicial or other government proceedings? The answer to this very general form of the question seems to be no. Affirming that answer: It appears that the legal definition of perjury, for example in 18 USC §1621, applies only where &quot;a law ... authorizes an oath to be administered.&quot; So it would seem that nobody can make an affirmation &quot;under penalty of perjury&quot; unless the government permits it. Can or does perjury apply in arbitration or other alternative-dispute-resolution (ADR) proceedings? There might be a law that explicitly says oaths administered in the course of bona fide ADR are made under penalty of perjury; if so that's the answer to this question. If not: At least U.S. courts generally respect and enforce ADR results. Which would make it seem in the public interest to enforce perjury against anyone who lies to frustrate ADR proceedings. What's the reality?
RCW 7.04A.170 states that &quot;An arbitrator may issue a subpoena for the attendance of a witness and for the production of records and other evidence at any hearing and may administer oaths&quot;, also &quot;All laws compelling a person under subpoena to testify and all fees for attending a judicial proceeding, a deposition, or a discovery proceeding as a witness apply to an arbitration proceeding as if the controversy were the subject of a civil action in this state&quot;. There may be states or circumstances where arbitrators are not authorized to administer oaths.
26 USC 7206: Any person who— (1) Willfully makes and subscribes any return, statement, or other document, which contains or is verified by a written declaration that it is made under the penalties of perjury, and which he does not believe to be true and correct as to every material matter [...] shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $100,000 ($500,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 3 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution. ("Return", as defined in 26 USC 6696, includes an income tax return.) This clause notably doesn't care whose favor the falsification was in, or why you did it. You knew it wasn't true and you put it on your tax return anyway, and you declared under penalty of perjury that it was true and correct. That's a felony, end of story. (Paragraph (4) of this section covers some other types of fraud done "with intent to evade" taxes, but that restriction does not apply to paragraph (1).) The likelihood of actually being prosecuted in such an instance is beyond the scope of this site. But in the given case, the falsification really isn't in the government's favor. The purpose was to become eligible to collect government social security benefits, which you otherwise wouldn't be eligible for. Presumably you would only bother to do this if you thought you'd collect more in benefits than you pay in extra tax, which means the government loses in the long run. This also eliminates any chance you'd have of claiming the falsification was "immaterial": it affected your eligibility for social security, and you knew that - it was the whole reason you did it.
See jury-nullification. I'm not a legal historian, so I can't say for sure what the laws on jury acquittals were at that time in that jurisdiction. However, when a jury has final discretion to acquit a defendant of a crime that's it: They can effectively ignore laws if they want to acquit someone. Such acquittals do not set a precedent or have any bearing outside of the trial in which they issue their verdict.
The concept of "jury nullification" is not really applicable to civil litigation, whether it's a bench or a jury trial. The short answer is: generally in the United States, civil judges, and civil juries, have to follow the law. If the jury doesn't follow the law, the judge can entertain and grant a JNOV motion on the basis that no reasonable jury could have reached the verdict in question. If the judge doesn't follow the law, the aggrieved party can appeal the judgment as an abuse of discretion or on similar grounds. Jury nullification occurs when a criminal jury returns a verdict of "not guilty" although they feel the defendant was in fact guilty under the law. That is the only circumstance where no legal review can reverse the verdict. Civil "jury nullification" is not a particularly meaningful concept.
There is a big difference between knowing something and proving it. A lawyer who knows a client is guilty can take steps to prevent the state from proving guilt. (E.g., motion to exclude evidence, cross examining witnesses.) The belief that a client has committed a crime does not necessarily mean one knows what specific crime was committed. Is a killing Murder 1, Murder 2, or manslaughter? There are defenses even when an act may be a crime. E.g., self defense, insanity, justifiable. Lawyers are not permitted to assist in perjury. E.g., allow the client to testify to something he knows is false.
Acquittals in criminal jury trials cannot be appealed (at least in a way that affects the outcome, Colorado and a few other states allow criminal appeals by the prosecution solely for the purposes of clarifying the law prospectively). Interlocutory appeals (i.e. appeals before the case is over) by the prosecution are allowed for pre-trial rulings (e.g. suppression of evidence rulings in a pre-trial hearing), in criminal cases, but not for evidentiary rulings made in the midst of a jury trial (which is when jeopardy attaches for the purposes of the double jeopardy rule, which is what prevents acquittals from being retried). An error in a ruling on an admission or rejection of evidence at trial may be appealed by a convicted defendant if the alleged misapplication of the evidence rule was an abuse of discretion by the judge, and was not &quot;harmless error&quot; (i.e. if as part of all errors made in the case there is a reasonable probability that it changed the outcome that the jury reached).
The US legal system deals with this by punishing you for the crimes of which you are convicted. That is, those where the evidence (whatever it is) convinces a jury that you are guilty beyond reasonable doubt. If there is insufficient evidence, for whatever reason then you would not be convicted. The prosecution can, subject to admissibility, put forward whatever evidence they like in order to convince the jury. This can include a pile of ash that they allege contained convincing and unambiguous evidence of guilt. Of course, if that's all they've got the prosecution would probably be censured by the judge for wasting everybody's time and money, more likely, a prosecutor wouldn't lay charges in the first place. As to punishment for an evidence tampering conviction: you have been convicted of evidence tampering, not drug production so you will be punished for evidence tampering, not drug production. The legislature sets different punishments for these for a reason, possibly a reason known only to them but a reason nevertheless. The judge has discretion to apply anything between the minimum and maximum sentence prescribed. A conviction for evidence tampering in a drug case rather than, say, a jaywalking case, is likely to get a more severe sentence all else being equal.
No Chapter 1, Section 10 of the FAA states that a court may vacate an arbitral award only if it finds that one of the following limited grounds applies: (1) the award is a result of corruption or fraud; (2) evident partiality or corruption of an arbitrator; (3) arbitrator misconduct, such as refusing to hear pertinent and material evidence; or (4) the arbitrators exceeded their powers, or so imperfectly executed them that a mutual, final and definite award was not made. There is no “the arbitrator screwed up” basis. This is pretty much universal across jurisdictions for arbitration. One of the features (whether you think it’s a good or bad feature is up to you) is that arbitration is, for all practical purposes, final. That’s it, we’re done. The law is written that way because parties to an arbitration freely and voluntarily chose this method of dispute resolution over the courts. In theory, at least. Having made their choice, the courts will not unmake it.