Thursday, February 28, 2019
Falsus in Uno, Falsus in Omnibus
George Fisher, "The Jury's Rise as Lie Detector,"
Yale Law Journal 107.3 (December, 1997) 575-713 (at 655, not the way a lawyer would cite this, I realize):
Update from Kenneth Haynes:
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In its original form, the rule of falsus in uno was mandatory. "The notion," Wigmore wrote, "was that the testimony of one detected in a lie was wholly worthless and must of necessity be rejected.368I won't venture into this thicket of references and cross-references, but the rule seems to appear in Aegidius Bossius (1487-1546), Tractatus varij. Qui omnem ferè Criminalem materiam excellenti doctrina complectuntur... (Venice: Altobellus Salicatius, 1588), p. 199, bottom of 2nd column:
368 3 WIGMORE, supra note 44, § 1009, at 675. Wigmore traced the rule of falsus in uno to the Stuart treason trials of the late 17th century. See id. § 1008, at 675 n.l; see also, e.g., Trial of Hampden, 9 Howell's State Trials 1053, 1101 (1684) ("Falso in uno, falsus in omnibus. If we can prove that what he hath said of my lord of Essex is false, he is not to be believed against the defendant."); Trial of Langhorn, 7 Howell's State Trials 417, 478 (1679) ("If I can prove any one point (in answer to that which he hath given evidence) not to be true, then I conceive, my lord, he ought to be set aside."); Trial of Coleman, 7 Howell's State Trials 1,71 (1678), quoted in KENYON, supra note 162, at 125 ("[I]t would much ennervate any man's testimony, to the whole, if he could be proved false in any one thing."). Although Wigmore did not find earlier expressions of the rule, its repeated appearance in the trials of this era suggests it had earlier roots. Barbara Shapiro notes that Michael Dalton's early-17th-century manual for justices of the peace advised magistrates that when examining accused felons, they should discredit the whole of the accused's story if any part proved false. See SHAPIRO, supra note 28, at 156, 279 n.l6.
Update from Kenneth Haynes:
Baldus de Ubaldis, in the 14th century, discussed the question in his commentaries on Roman law (in the course of which he elaborated a sophisticated account of partial proof). The index to the Giuntine Opera Omnia (Venice, 1577) indicates that he wrote on “Testis si dicit falsum in vno capitulo, an reprobetur in omnibus” and on “Testis si in vno capitulo est falsus, in tota causa dicitur suspectus”.
