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Use perjury in a sentence

Definition of perjury:

  • (noun) criminal offense of making false statements under oath

Sentence Examples:

This trust the Knights had, with the blackest treason and the most profligate perjury, betrayed and abandoned.

How far the equivocal expressions and restrictions of that oath may excuse her from perjury, let a good casuist be the judge.

Whence it may be doubted, whether the impudence of the succeeding prelates, that denied this, or their perjury in breaking of it, be greater.

Pride, lust, anger, impatience, malice, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, concupiscence, robbery, lying, perjury, idle talking, scurrility, ignorance, negligence, and other pests have overthrown me, and all the vices like ravening beasts have devoured my soul.

The recklessness with which good ladies of unblemished character will commit what technical-minded lawyers might be inclined to consider perjury, and on occasion even stoop to something like forgery, would surprise anyone who was not conversant with it.

You are a farmer, sir, fresh from Essex; and having achieved an unenviable notoriety in Colchester, by perjury and highway robbery, you come up to perfect your education by listening to the shameful instruction communicated to you by an atrocious play.

Where convictions for perjury are secured heavy sentences are invariably imposed, and a wholesome apprehension instilled into the hearts of prospective witnesses, yet the amount of deliberate false swearing in our criminal courts would be inadequately described as shocking.

In a single year four police inspectors were convicted of conspiracy and were also under indictment for bribery, one police captain was convicted of extortion, one lieutenant was convicted of extortion, one patrolman of perjury, and two patrolmen were convicted of extortion.

"Ah, then," he cried, seizing with his usual quickness at the admission which had thus unconsciously, perhaps, slipped from her, "you acknowledge you uttered a perjury to save yourself from making declarations you believed to be hurtful to the prisoner?"

Extensive sales of forged certificates of naturalization have been discovered, as well as many cases of naturalization secured by perjury and fraud; and in addition, instances have accumulated showing that many courts issue certificates of naturalization carelessly and upon insufficient evidence.

These words have been used interchangeably; but there is a tendency to restrict perjure to that species of forswearing which constitutes the crime of perjury at law, namely, the willful violation of an oath administered by a magistrate or according to law.

Defendants may not petition to remove a case to the Westminster courts after a jury is selected because such has resulted in unnecessary expense to plaintiffs and delay for defendants in which they suborn perjury by obtaining witnesses to perjure themselves.

It would be little enough to regain our foothold upon Southern territory, or repossess Southern forts, even if forts and territory have been wrested from us by treason and perjury, if with every mile of advance we did not gain a stronghold of principle.

It was not without extreme reluctance that they pronounced a sentence of acquittal; but they eagerly admitted such evidence as was stained with perjury or procured by torture to prove the most improbable charges against the most respectable characters.

He charged Sumner with perjury in taking the senatorial oath to his personal grievance and complained that he had been burned and hung in effigy under the advice of Sumner and his brother agitators because of his unswerving devotion to the Constitution.

Having persons make affidavit to statements of this nature does not strengthen them in any way, since the law permits persons to repudiate affidavits without constituting perjury, so long as the affidavit or statement has not been given in any judicial proceeding.

The rough and energetic countenance of the gigantic descendant of the Norman race, as he stood motionless beside them, his carbine supported on his broad shoulder, was expressive of such calm integrity, that his appearance alone banished all idea of perjury.

The graver charges of subornation of perjury etc., were abandoned, and Macdonald's friends confined themselves to an attempt to prove that the inquiry had been unfairly conducted, that the warden had been harshly treated, and the testimony not fairly reported.

Bribery, perjury, every appliance which the most subtle ingenuity of eager and unscrupulous malice could invent, have been exhausted in the vain effort to make infamous, in the sight of mankind, a noble cause, by imputation of personal odium upon its most distinguished representative.

Shall it also say that, paying with ingratitude and perjury, the sovereign who has generously granted you every thing which you had any right to hope for, you have drawn down upon your country new misfortunes, and upon yourselves an indelible disgrace?

Most of the people are too hard at work to forage information for themselves, or even to be thoroughly cognizant of that collected in the newspapers, and therefore parliamentary candidates, if not correct in their figures and statements, should be publicly arraigned for perjury.

He is called upon for his defense, and contents himself with a little declamation about the jurymen and his country; asserts that all the witnesses have committed perjury, and hints that the police force generally have entered into a conspiracy against him.

Perhaps not, after one's conscience is seared in callosity by perjuries, and her forehead grown bold as brass; but the neophyte in the laudable work of adaptation to such circumstances will trip in her words and color awkwardly while acquiring this enviable hardihood.

Guthrie once more got upon his feet to address the Bench, and said: "May it please the Court, I move that the testimony of the Crown's witness, Rose Cameron, alias Rose Scott, be set aside as totally unreliable; and, further, that she be indicted for perjury."

I remember, on one occasion, seeing a father, mother, and three grown-up daughters, who came into court to sustain a charge against a farmer for an assault on one of the daughters, committed for perjury, while the prisoner was released without a stain on his name.

Persons convicted of perjury, forgery, etc., are not to be admitted as legal witnesses, but that the record of their contrition must be produced at the time the objection is made, for the Court mil take no notice of hearsay and common fame in such respect.

Without suggesting that there is a great amount of perjury in English courts, for Englishmen respect the law and have a wholesome dread of indictments, we cannot pride ourselves on a system that uses what ought to be a very solemn ceremony on every trumpery occasion.

Augustin, and the inquisitor-general (Espinosa) who had signed the warrant was in hell unless he had repented; the inquisitors were ashamed and were seeking to avert the disgrace from themselves, when they ought to be punishing the perjury of those who had testified.

Starting his career as a perjurer, it is curious that he was singularly slow to suspect perjury in others; he was the most systematically betrayed of all English kings, because he was the least suspicious, and the most ready to buy off and to forgive rebels.

And though I met with great discouragements in the prosecution, yet I followed it so vigorously that I got a verdict against the informers for willful perjury, and had forthwith taken them up, had not they forthwith fled from justice and hid themselves.

"Is it possible," he asked, "that you have allowed yourself to give any credence to the delirious utterances of a man suffering from a wound on the head, or to the frantic words of a woman who has already abused the ears of the court by a deliberate perjury?"

To hide the perjury, avarice, and cowardice of his father, and to appease the bitter wrong, he had even bowed to take the dark suspicion on himself, until his wronged and half-sane brother (to whom, moreover, he owed his life) should have time to fly from England.

For though a people may very lawfully, by a new bond, enlarge and add to their former obligations that they brought themselves under; yet they can never, without involving themselves in the guilt of perjury, relax or cancel former obligations by any future bond.

Fine and imprisonment were prescribed as a punishment for holding or exercising any of "the offices, positions, trusts, professions, or functions" specified, without having taken the oath; and false swearing or affirmation in taking it was declared to be perjury, punishable by imprisonment in the penitentiary.

Our very attempt to secure the rights of all classes by the careful drawing up of civil and criminal codes, and by the institution of courts where they are administered, has fostered the litigiousness of the people, and has led to a fearful amount of perjury.

Allured by such fascinating powers, he shortly suffered nothing to stop his course; and though when he began his career he would have started at the mention of actual dishonor, long before it was concluded, neither treachery nor perjury were regarded by him as stumbling blocks.

Notwithstanding the captain owned all this, yet he could not forbear reflections on those who gave testimony against him at his trial, charging them with perjury and conspiracy to ruin him, though nothing like it appeared from the manner in which they delivered their testimony.

Arbitrary arrests were made wholesale, trial was tardy, often there was no trial at all; conviction was obtained by perjury or conspiracy, and worse than all, the victims of these unworthy processes were thrown into the foulest dens or dungeons mostly unfit for human occupation.

It was a will case and if he won, the effect would be to beggar two most estimable middle-aged women who were justly entitled to the property, to which end personally I am convinced he had committed forgery; the perjury that accompanied it I do not even mention.

For myself I seriously confess, that when I reflect on the unaccountable folly that restored the executive power to his hands, all covered as he was with perjuries and treason, I am far more ready to condemn the Constituent Assembly than the unfortunate prisoner Louis Capet.

Perjury, fraud, falsehood, and dishonesty, were its fruits, and the only legacy it left to the country was an enormous mass of pauperism, and a national morality comparatively vitiated and depraved, in spite of all religious influence and of domestic affections that are both strong and tender.

They nursed public resentment against the young fellow until every hand was against him, and he was forced to become an outlaw, or fall into the hands of the authorities and be forced into prison, or to the gallows, through the perjury of these same deputy marshals.

"It will not be forgotten," I said, "that the red-handed murderers and thieves who set this rebellion on foot went out of the Union yelping for the Constitution which they had conspired to overthrow by the blackest perjury and treason that ever confronted the Almighty."

Accordingly, it should be known that, as Gerson correctly thinks, the oaths and vows usually taken in the Universities or to worldly lords ought not to be so rigorously regarded that every violation of them should be regarded as the breaking of a vow or an act of perjury.

I am, as it were, sure, and do believe without all doubt, that there is such a city as Constantinople; yet, for me to take my oath thereon were a kind of perjury, because I hold no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in the certainty thereof.

And, to be sure, as sweet as life is, people ought to take care to be able to live sweetly while they do live; besides, I cannot help saying the lady shews herself to be what she is, by her abhorrence of perjury, which is certainly a very dreadful crime.

The result has been the promotion of child slavery and illiteracy through the wholesale perjury of parents and guardians. I have known scores of instances in which children ten or eleven years old were employed through the possession of certificates stating that they were thirteen or fourteen.

It may be urged, my lords, that he who shall give false evidence, forfeits the indemnity to which the honest witness is entitled; but let us consider why this should be now, rather than in any former time, accounted a sufficient security against falsehood and perjury.

False oaths of this description are, indeed, not infrequently preceded by some fictitious formalism, such as an unreal and temporary transfer of property; but this is done, not in order to evade the guilt of perjury, but, in case of detection, to open a technical escape from its legal penalty.

The rightful crew would know what to expect as a punishment for their carelessness, and would either perjure themselves by swearing that the boats had sunk at their moorings, or thinking discretion even better than perjury, disappear into the deserted hinterland through which we had marched.

The next day he pronounced two orations, to congratulate and admonish his victorious Goths, and to reproach the senate, as the vilest of slaves, with their perjury, folly, and ingratitude; sternly declaring, that their estates and honors were justly forfeited to the companions of his arms.

For it is certain, that some of the most shocking instances of injustice, adultery, murder, perjury, and even of persecution, may, in many supposable cases, not have the appearance of being likely to produce an overbalance of misery in the present state; perhaps sometimes may have the contrary appearance.

I declared, what I am absolutely convinced to have been the case, that the marriage certificate she had shown me was a forgery, and I concluded that if she proved the marriage by forgery and perjury, I should institute proceedings for divorce on the grounds of her subsequent life.

An upright man, but a persecuted king, he believed that oaths, extorted by violence and eluded through fear, were no perjuries; and he broke each day some of those to which he had bound himself, under the belief, doubtless, that the excesses of the people freed him from his oath.

Thus while perjury became an every-day occurrence, the victorious army began to be itself vanquished by a powerful enemy which it had scarcely calculated upon, and was utterly unprepared to meet, and finally resting from its labors, enjoyed the sweets of peace and the fat of the land.

If we want to inculcate true lessons of morality and integrity, to stop bribery, forgery, perjury, dishonesty, infanticide, and homicide, we must change our system of education, or it is possible that society, laboring under so heavy a burden of sin and dishonor, will in the near future be crushed to pieces.

And so the Poet fitly ascribes to Oberon and his ministers both Cupid's delight in frivolous breaches of faith and Jove's laughter at lovers' perjuries; and this on the ground, apparently, that the doings of those in Cupid's power are as harmless and unaccountable as the freaks of a dream.

Then listening to the lying of other witnesses, and looking up at Jason's face, so full of pain, and seeing how silent he was under cruel perjury, she remembered that this man's worst crime had been his love of her, and so she staggered to her feet to confess everything.

Sometimes men of higher mark and more generous dispositions, allured by the temptations of the social revolution, would enter on the same pursuits, but they generally miscarried from want of what was then cleverly called "subtlety," but which plain people could not easily distinguish from lying and perjury.

The ratio in the first affidavit was as ten is to thirty-seven, so that under the second affidavit, which they say was willful and corrupt perjury, he got eight thousand four hundred and fifty-seven dollars a year instead of twelve thousand nine hundred and thirty-five dollars and fifty-two cents.

The detective business swarms with men of doubtful honesty and morals, who are under a constant temptation to charge for services not rendered and expenses not incurred, who are accustomed to exaggeration if not to perjury, and who have neither the inclination nor the ability to do competent work.

Their experiences with the Russian courts had taught them always to over-state the facts and when one realizes that there is a conflict of testimony, and in most of them perjury is committed, it made us quite patient when we found them just a little less truthful than our American litigants.

And there can be no doubt that to his many previous outrages, entitling him to an unenviable immortality, he has added that of willful and deliberate perjury; and we are glad to know that no one member of the committee deems any statement made by him as worthy of the slightest credit.

It was a mere matter of money, he explained, and, what he did not explain, a mere matter of perjury as well, the perjury of local oafs ready to swear to whatever they were paid for, ready to testify for instance that they had known anybody for any required length of time.

He upbraided him with perjury, with infidelity to the late monarch, with aiding the murder of that prince, with usurping the title of the house of Mortimer, with adopting the most crooked and cruel policy, with burdening the nation with unrighteous taxes, and with corrupting the Parliamentary elections.

Our lawyers were delighted with the course we took, and said that it had deranged all the plans of the prosecution, and that they had not a particle of evidence against us; that if we were convicted now, it would be through mere prejudice and perjury on the part of the court.

William's anger at length burst forth, and, reproaching Harold bitterly for his perjury, he declared that he would come before the end of the year to exact payment of the whole of his debt and to pursue the perfidious Saxon even into the places wherein he considered his hold to be firmest.

To have made her a widow was, in fact, to have freed her from the yoke of a harsh and unloved master; but the fact was, notwithstanding the perjury of which he believed her to have been guilty, he had never hated her as he had hated the other authors of his wrongs.

It is apt to produce a belief that there are two kinds of truth, one of which it is a serious thing to violate, viz. when you are on your oath; but the other of which it is a harmless, or at least a venial thing to violate, viz. when falsehood is only falsehood, and not perjury.

I took the liberty of observing to him, father, that, having obtained his throne by perjury, and cemented it by blood, and maintained it by hypocrisy, he could entertain no hope of preserving it unless the collective baseness of his subjects should be found to exceed his own, which was not probable.

Of this there has long been most abundant melancholy proof; yet, under its present contraband character, it has been attended by, if possible, unprecedented enormities and misery, as well as involving the base and cruel agents of it in the further crime of deliberate perjury, in order to conceal their nefarious employment.

The enormous drain upon the producing agents necessary to maintain in idleness and luxury the great capitalists of the world who accumulated their ill-gotten wealth by fraud, perjury and "conquest," so called, grinds the producing agent down to the lowest possible point at which he can live and still produce.

That the gentlemen who framed this bill, and who wished to let themselves out of the penitentiary for committing perjury, would be likely to make a very liberal arrangement with the author, or his widow or children, if it was within his power to refuse to consent to a renewal of a copyright.

The party leaders endeavored to gloss the matter over with righteous indignation and ambiguous phrases, but it nevertheless remains a fact that the desire to counteract effectively, a tendency to perjury among Socialists led the German Government a few years later to make perjury punishable by penal servitude up to ten years.

In all instances the constables endeavored to exaggerate the conduct of the accused, and never once attempted to palliate it; and as the Magistrate seemed to place implicit confidence in every word the police uttered (although one or two cases of gross perjury were proved against them), convictions were much more frequent than acquittals.

The convictions for perjury were not numerous: the whole system partook of the unsoundness of its elements, and the inhabitants were indebted for their safety to those principles of humanity, which, in the absence of interest and passion, regulated the measures of the government, and restrained its agents from atrocious conspiracies.

Our English judicial oath, in use though no longer compulsory, has withstood all attacks upon it, for the insuperable practical reason that the majority of men are more afraid of swearing falsely than of speaking falsely, and that the fewer scruples a man feels about lying, the more he is likely to feel about perjury.

That, as the property, the good name, and even the lives of men depended in great measure upon preserving the proper respect for an oath, the man who willfully took a false oath deserved to be banished out of all civilized society; he added, that he hoped Sir John would indict him for perjury.

He knew that there were some perjuries which, being so superstitious, she would not commit, and besides, the fear, which had hitherto restrained his curiosity, of making Odette angry if he questioned her, of making himself odious, had ceased to exist now that he had lost all hope of ever being loved by her.

No copyist, at half-a-crown an hour, had yet betrayed the English Foreign Office; and it had not dawned upon the clouded intellects of European statesmen that deliberate national perjury, accompanied by public meetings of sovereigns, and much blare of many trumpets, could be practiced with such triumphant success as events have since shown.

It is to be remembered, that the patrons of this bill evidently call for testimony from the abandoned and the profligate, from men whom they suppose necessarily to confess their own crimes in their depositions; and surely wretches like these ought not to be solicited to perjury by the offer of a reward.

This barrister not only made violent personal attacks on every witness of importance for the prosecution, without, as the judges observed, "any shadow of foundation," but he assailed his own client with a vehemence and a persistence which are without parallel in the case of an advocate defending a person against a charge of perjury.

Such was the blindness of the Assembly in its bourgeois egotism, in its mistrust of the people, in its absurd hatred of republican government, that it still thought to impose upon France the authority of this King, disgraced, despised even by his own partisans, and convicted of perjury, treason, and conspiracy with the foreigner.

It was scarcely possible to believe that any gentleman was sincere, when he expressed an apprehension, that a system of public rectitude and intelligence in electors would give vice and ignorance an ascendancy in the choice of representatives, and that a system of perjury, bribery, and corruption was essential to the attainment of virtue and knowledge.

It is wholly certain that larceny and perjury combined do not damage the state the hundredth part as much as the curse of the poison vice; yet what should we think of the moral status of a legislative assembly devising a plan to increase the national revenues by granting license to pickpockets and professional false witnesses?

Rich, that he was more sorry for his perjury, than for the sentence that had just been pronounced against him: Rich had been sent by the secretary to take away all Sir Thomas's books and papers, during which time some conversation passed, which Rich misrepresented in order to advance himself in the King's favor.

Meantime, lest anything should be wanting, that could have contributed to the elucidation on a point of such supreme importance, follows in the next chapter a concluding and more particular view of the grounds, on which, on the occasion of his visit to the temple, the intention of deliberate perjury was found necessary to be imputed to him.

Accordingly, they did what they could, and yet could make little or no earnings at it; for this little step of prosecution had made them so known, and their late apparent perjury had made them so detestable, that even the common sort of bad men shunned them, and would not willingly yield them any assistance.

Besides, when he repudiated the witnesses, that he was pressed by the dilemma, either his confession was true or it was false: if true, there was no further ground for hesitation; but if he had said what was false, he was to be held as answerable for perjury, because he had sworn to something different from the reality.

I found the law considered as a good joke by some conscienceless men, who hardly took the trouble to see that the certificates were filled out properly; loudly commended by others whom it enabled, at the expense of a little perjury in which they had no hand, to fill up their shops with cheap labor, with perfect security to themselves.

Who but he can sanctify the transfer of land, the union of man and wife, the entrance of the newborn child upon his career of life; who but himself can conduct judicial investigations, where the deities are the only guardians of truth and avengers of perjury, or where their supernatural power alone can determine between innocence and guilt?

And, it is very remarkable, that the pernicious project now in hand to reduce us to beggary, was forwarded by one of these false accusers, who had been convicted of endeavoring, by perjury and subornation, to take away the lives of several innocent persons here among us; and, indeed, there could not be a more proper instrument for such a work.

By this writ, which had the force of a statute, ecclesiastical jurisdiction was defined as extending to cases of deadly sin which were visited by penance or fine, and offenses as regards things spiritual, such as neglect of churches, to suits about tithes and offerings, assaults on clerks, defamation, and perjury which did not involve a question of money.

It is obvious, surely, without any further argument, that laws making perjury necessary, which demand the committing of acts of, often pretended, infidelity, are immoral; nor is their immorality lessened by the fact that through the rather heavy costs of these "arranged suits," only the richer and more fortunate classes, as a rule, are able to bring them.

It will be rather difficult for one to prove, after a number of years, that a publisher who has made an affidavit to secure a copyright to which he really was not entitled had committed perjury in connection with the securing of that copyright; but the question as to one's piracy of the book is open and "he that runs may read."

Forgeries and perjuries of shameless and flagrant character have been perpetrated, not only in the dense centers of population, but throughout the country; and it is established beyond doubt that very many so-called citizens of the United States have no title whatever to that right, and are asserting and enjoying the benefits of the same through the grossest frauds.

All was in vain: the three innocent victims of perjury were condemned and executed, and the witnesses promoted and rewarded, not with money only, but, strange to say, with universal respect and regard; although their merit, supposing it to be real, was that of murderers and incendiaries, who had turned evidence for the crown against their accomplices.

Photography is dragged into our criminal law courts, and sits on the right hand of Justice, giving evidence of the most undeniable character, without being under oath, and free from the suspicion of perjury, convicting murderers and felons, and acquitting the innocent without prejudice; and in our courts of equity, cases are frequently decided by the truth-telling evidence of photography.

After having experienced the beneficial results of this policy upon the sister kingdom for a space of eighteen years, why did she revoke the act establishing it, and force the hated Union upon a people, a majority of whom were not free to express an opinion upon the subject, or to resist a measure thrust upon them through perjury, intimidation, bribery and fraud?

As far as can be ascertained, the issue of insanity was never raised, at any rate by the Court, prior to the perjury trial, and it was only when this master litigant, after having been active as a complainant for a great number of years, at last betrayed himself into committing a criminal offense that the issue of insanity was brought up.