James Moore Wayne

“ It is said to be an inflexible rule of the common law, applicable to every charge of perjury; that it cannot be changed but by the legislative power: that until some statutory change is made, Courts must enforce it: that though other kind of evidence, and that relied upon by the prosecution in this case, may establish a case of false swearing, it will not suffice to convict for perjury: in short, that a living witness is in every case indispensible. ”

“ In cases where the perjury charged is contradicted by a public record, proved to have been well known to the defendant when he took the oath; the oath only being proved to have been taken. In cases where a party is charged with taking an oath, contrary to what he must necessarily have known to be the truth, and the false swearing can be proved by his own letters, relating to the fact sworn to; or by other written testimony existing and being found in the possession of a defendant, and which has been treated by him as containing the evidence of the fact recited in it. ”

“ If the letters show the book to have been recognised by the defendant as containing the true invoice, his admission supersedes the necessity of other proof to establish the real price given by him for the goods; and the letters and invoice book, in connection, preponderate against the oath taken by the defendant, making a living witness to the corpus delicti, charged in the indictment, unnecessary. All has been done in the case that can be done to intercept such evidence as would tend to prejudice or mislead ”

“ If it be true, then-and it is so-that the rule of a single witness, being insufficient to prove perjury rests upon the law of a persumptive equality of credit between persons, or upon what Starkie terms, the apprehension that it would be unsafe to convict in a case where there is merely the oath of one man to be weighed against that of another ”

“ Unless such inference can be made, the evidence offered is the best evidence which the nature of the case admits. The evidence is good under the general principle that a man's own acts, conduct, and declarations, where voluntary, are always admissible in evidence against him.
So in respect to the invoice book of John Wood, containing an invoice of the goods enumerated in the invoice to which the defendant swore the owners' oath; in the first of which the goods are priced higher in the sale of them to the defendant. ”

“ That principle is, that circumstances necessarily make up a part of the proofs of human transactions; that such as have been reduced to writing in unequivocal terms, when the writing has been proved to be authentic, cannot be made more certain by evidence aliunde; and that such as have been reduced to writing, whether they relate to the declarations or conduct of men, can only be proved by oral testimony. ”

“ In such a case, if the person was called in whose handwriting the book or other written paper was, it might happen that he had only been the recorder of the transaction at the instigation of one of the parties to it, without his ever having had any communication with the other respecting its contents. ”