Opinion
No. 70-536 (Supreme Court No. 23979)
Decided February 16, 1971.
Defendant held in contempt for perjury following hearing in which testimony and evidence was presented which tended to show defendant's testimony in prior hearings had been false. Defendant appealed.
Reversed
1. CONTEMPT — Summary Punishment — Perjury — Court's Presence — Knows Judicially — Testimony False. A court has the right to punish one summarily for contempt for manifest perjury committed in the court's presence where it knows judicially that his testimony was false.
2. Determination — Perjury Constitutes Contempt — Issue — Judicial Process — Obstructed or Halted. In determining whether perjury constitutes contempt of court, the basic issue which must be resolved is not whether perjury was committed, but whether the perjury, if committed, obstructed or halted the judicial process.
3. Perjurious Statements — Not — Obstruct — Judicial Process — Collateral Evidence — Necessary — Establish Falsity. Perjurious statements do not by themselves substantially obstruct or halt a trial or demonstrate contempt for the judicial process if the court cannot judicially know that the testimony is false without the presentation of collateral evidence to establish such falsity.
Error to the District Court of Grand County, Honorable Don Lorenz, Judge.
Gorsuch, Kirgis, Campbell, Walker and Grover, Bennett S. Aisenberg, for plaintiff in error.
Coit, Graham and Webster, G. A. McCarville, C. Elwood Bradley, for defendants in error.
This case was originally filed in the Supreme Court of the State of Colorado and was subsequently transferred to the Court of Appeals under the authority vested in the Supreme Court.
The parties will be referred to as they appeared in the trial court, where plaintiff in error was the defendant and the defendants in error were the plaintiffs.
Plaintiffs brought an action against the defendant and others to enjoin them from interfering with plaintiffs' possession and development of certain mining claims. Trial was to the court. At the conclusion of several hearings on plaintiffs' claim, the plaintiffs moved that the defendant be adjudged guilty of contempt of court for perjury. The trial court reversed ruling on this motion. Thereafter, pursuant to R.C.P. Colo. 107, the defendant received a citation and order to show cause why he should not be found guilty of contempt. At the conclusion of a hearing on the contempt citation, the trial court found that the defendant had perjured himself in the prior hearings, adjudged the defendant guilty of contempt, sentenced him to 30 days in jail, fined him $500, and charged him with plaintiffs' expenses in the amount of $2,960.46. It is from this judgment that the defendant brings this appeal.
The evidence relating to the question of perjury took the following form.
At the initial hearings held on plaintiffs' claim, plaintiffs called the defendant as an adverse witness. The defendant testified that on July 3, 1968, he went to the area in which plaintiffs' mining claims were situated; that he slept overnight there; and that on the morning of July 4 he placed 18 notices of lode locations in the field. After the defendant had testified, plaintiffs then introduced the testimony of a motel manager who testified that the defendant had spent the night of July 3 at the Holiday Inn at Grand Junction. Plaintiffs then introduced testimony to show that the forms that the defendant had used as notices of lode locations were not in existence on July 4. At the hearing on the contempt citation, the defendant testified that he may have been mistaken as to the exact date upon which he placed the lode location notices in the field, and that it might have been on July 3 rather than July 4. The remainder of the evidence at this hearing related primarily to the question of whether the forms which defendant had placed in the field were in existence on July 4.
[1,2] Our Supreme Court has upheld the generally accepted rule that a court has the right to punish one summarily for contempt for manifest perjury committed in the court's presence where it knows judicially that his testimony was false. See Handler v. Gordon, 111 Colo. 234, 140 P.2d 622; and Eykelboom v. People, 71 Colo. 318, 206 P. 388. In each of the above cited cases, judicial knowledge of the falsity of the testimony was gained from the conflicting and contradictory statements of the defendant himself. The acts of perjury found in those cases were not only so manifest as to be immediately obvious to the trial judges, but also so flagrant that they defied and impeded the forward progress of the judicial hearings during which they were committed. We conclude from those cases that the basic issue which must be resolved is not whether perjury was committed, but whether the perjury, if committed, obstructed or halted the judicial process. The rationale of our conclusion that such is the basic issue in cases of this type is set forth in the following statement of Justice Black appearing in In Re Michael, 326 U.S. 224, 66 S.Ct. 78, 90 L.Ed. 30
"All perjured relevant testimony is at war with justice, since it may produce a judgment not resting on truth. Therefore it cannot be denied that it tends to defeat the sole ultimate objective of a trial. It need not necessarily, however, obstruct or halt the judicial process. For the function of trial is to sift the truth from a mass of contradictory evidence, and to do so the fact-finding tribunal must hear both truthful and false witnesses."
[3] There remains the problem of determining when perjury has the effect of substantially obstructing or halting the judicial process. The Handler and Eykelboom cases imply, and those decisions cited hereafter which we consider to be well reasoned specifically hold, that perjurious statements do not by themselves substantially obstruct or halt a trial or demonstrate contempt for the judicial process if the court cannot judicially know that the testimony is false without the presentation of collateral evidence to establish such falsity. See State of Washington v. Estill, 55 Wash.2d 576, 349 P.2d 210; Harbor Tank Storage Co. v. De Angelis, 85 N.J. Super. 92, 204 A.2d 13; and Annot., 89 A.L.R.2d 1258. This is the rule which we apply here.
In the instant case it is clear that the trial court's finding of perjury was based on collateral evidence introduced by the plaintiffs to impeach the defendant's testimony, and not upon anything inherently incredible or self-contradictory in the defendant's testimony itself. Moreover, this case does not involve a situation where acts of a witness, other than perjury, were viewed by the trial court as being contemptuous.
Under these circumstances, although we do not in any way condone an act of perjury, we rule that the trial court erred in finding the defendant guilty of contempt.
The judgment is reversed and remanded with directions that the trial court vacate the judgment of contempt and orders based thereon.
CHIEF JUDGE SILVERSTEIN and JUDGE PIERCE concur.