Police perjury, sometimes euphemistically called "testilying", is the act of a police officer knowingly giving false testimony. It is typically used in a criminal trial to "make the case" against defendants believed by the police to be guilty when irregularities during the suspects' arrest or search threaten to result in their acquittal. It also can be extended to encompass substantive misstatements of fact to convict those whom the police believe to be guilty, procedural misstatements to "justify" a search and seizure, or even the inclusion of statements to frame an innocent citizen. More generically, it has been said to be "[l]ying under oath, especially by a police officer, to help get a conviction."
Radley Prescott Balko is an American journalist, author, blogger, and speaker who writes about criminal justice, the drug war, and civil liberties. In 2022, he began publishing his work on Substack after being let go from The Washington Post, where he had worked as an opinion columnist for nine years. Balko has written several books, including The Rise of the Warrior Cop and The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist.
David Rice and Edward Poindexter were African-American activists charged and convicted of the murder of Omaha Police Officer Larry Minard. Minard died when a suitcase bomb containing dynamite exploded in a North Omaha home on August 17, 1970. Officer John Tess was also injured in the explosion. Poindexter and Rice had been members of the Black Panther Party.
Kathryn Johnston was an elderly woman from Atlanta, Georgia who was killed by undercover police officers in her home on Neal Street in northwest Atlanta on November 21, 2006, where she had lived for 17 years. Three officers had entered her home in what was later described as a 'botched' drug raid. Officers cut off burglar bars and broke down her door using a no-knock warrant. Police said Johnston fired at them and they fired in response; she fired one shot out the door over the officers' heads and they fired 39 shots, five or six of which hit her. None of the officers were injured by her gunfire, but Johnston was killed by the officers. Police injuries were later attributed to friendly fire from each other's weapons.
In the United States, a no-knock warrant is a warrant issued by a judge that allows law enforcement to enter a property without immediate prior notification of the residents, such as by knocking or ringing a doorbell. In most cases, law enforcement will identify themselves just before they forcefully enter the property. It is issued under the belief that any evidence they hope to find may be destroyed between the time that police identify themselves and the time they secure the area, or in the event where there is a large perceived threat to officer safety during the execution of the warrant.
Shareef Cousin is an African-American man from New Orleans who was convicted of the first-degree murder of Michael Gerardi in 1996 and sentenced to death as a juvenile in Louisiana. At age 17, he became the youngest condemned convict to be put on death row in Louisiana, and one of the youngest in the United States.
Georgia v. Smith was a court case held in 2007 resulting in the conviction of Joseph and Sonya Smith for child abuse and murder following the death of one of their sons, Josef Smith, from "acute and chronic" corporal punishment. The couple, who lived in Mableton, Georgia, prior to their incarceration were each sentenced to life plus 30 years in prison, the maximum sentence.
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Mumia Abu-Jamal was a 1982 murder trial in which Mumia Abu-Jamal was tried for the first-degree murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. A jury convicted Abu-Jamal on all counts and sentenced him to death.
Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978), is a United States Supreme Court case dealing with defendants' rights to challenge evidence collected on the basis of a warrant granted on the basis of a false statement. The court held that where a warrant affidavit contains a statement, necessary to the finding of probable cause, that is demonstrated to be both false and included by an affiant knowingly and intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, the warrant is not valid.
Ryan David Frederick, born 1979 or 1980 (age 43–44) is a former prisoner of the state of Virginia. He was convicted in 2009 of voluntary manslaughter for killing a police officer who was serving a search warrant. Frederick has said that he acted in self-defense and did not know that the person breaking into his house was a police officer. The case is notable for the magnitude of support the defendant received from his community, the press, and blogs, as well as for the relative leniency of the charge the jury chose for conviction in the death of an on-duty police officer. Frederick was reportedly released in 2016.
Steven Timothy Hayne is a pathologist from the US state of Mississippi who attracted significant controversy surrounding his medical practices and testimony in criminal trials, most notably those of Cory Maye, Jimmie Duncan, and Tyler Edmonds.
Jose Guerena was a U.S. Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War and who was killed in his Tucson, Arizona, home on May 5, 2011, by the Pima County Sheriff's Department SWAT team. Deputies were executing a warrant to search Guerena's home while investigating a case involving marijuana being smuggled into the U.S. from Mexico.
The Little Rock Police Department (LRPD), is the primary law enforcement agency for Little Rock, Arkansas in the United States.
Robert E. "Bob" Evans is an American politician. He is a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives from the 91st District, being first elected in 2007. He is a member of the Democratic party.
The prosecution of Rodricus Crawford in Caddo Parish, Louisiana in 2013, attracted national media attention. Crawford, a black man, was convicted and sentenced to death that year for suffocating his one-year-old son. His death sentence was seen as part of a pattern in the parish, which has the highest rate of death penalty sentencing in the nation. The prosecutor in this case said this penalty was needed for society's revenge.
Shona Banda is a Kansas resident of Garden City and medical cannabis rights advocate who was arrested for possession of cannabis in 2015. Her arrest and seizure of her child sparked a debate regarding cannabis in Kansas.
On the night of September 6, 2018, 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean was murdered in Dallas, Texas by off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger, who entered Jean's apartment and fatally shot him. Guyger, who said that she had entered Jean's apartment believing it was her own and believed Jean to be a burglar, was initially charged with manslaughter. The absence of a murder charge led to protests and accusations of racial bias because Jean—an unarmed black man—was killed in his own home by a white off-duty officer who had apparently disregarded police protocols. On November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on a charge of murder. On October 1, 2019, she was found guilty of murder, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment the following day. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2021.
On January 28, 2019, in the Pecan Park area in the East End district of Houston, Houston Police Department (HPD) officers initiated a no-knock raid on a house, killing the two homeowners, a husband and wife: Dennis Wayne Tuttle and Rhogena Ann Nicholas. They were aged 59 and 58, respectively. Five HPD officers sustained injuries.
On March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black American woman, was fatally shot in her Louisville, Kentucky apartment when at least seven police officers forced entry into the apartment as part of an investigation into drug dealing operations. Three Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) officers—Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrove—were involved in the shooting. Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was inside the apartment with her when the plainclothes officers knocked on the door and then forced entry. The officers said that they announced themselves as police before forcing entry, but Walker said he did not hear any announcement, thought the officers were intruders, and fired a warning shot at them. The shot hit Mattingly in the leg, and the officers fired 32 shots in return. Walker was unhurt but Taylor, who was behind Walker, was hit by six bullets and died. During the incident, Hankison moved to the side of the apartment and shot 10 bullets through a covered window and glass door. According to police, Taylor's home was never searched.
Julius Darius Jones is an American prisoner and former death row inmate from Oklahoma who was convicted of the July 1999 murder of Paul Howell. His case has received international attention due to claims of innocence and controversy surrounding his trial and conviction. Jones was convicted of the crime on the basis of what the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals later characterized as an "overwhelming" body of evidence consisting of "a co-defendant who directly implicated Jones, eyewitness identification, incriminating statements made by Jones after the crime, flight from police, damning physical evidence hidden in Jones's parents' home, and an interlocking web of other physical and testimonial evidence consistent with the State's theory."
