the whole truth, so help you God?
Can a person called to the stand in a court proceeding, refuse to swear on the Bible? Is it mandatory that you raise your right hand and place your left on the book, before you testify?
Yes, you can refuse to swear on the Bible. The court will provide an alternat, nonreligious oath to swear you in.
The only problem being that, in this country where religion is such a strong (if lamentable) part of the overall fabric of society, there would be great suspicion on the part of a jury about someone who refused to swear “so help me God” or to do it on the Bible. An opposing attorney could possibly use that to sow doubt in the minds of a jury, although doing more than alluding to it would probably be quashed by the judge.
(Of course, witnesses lie every day in court, and all of them take the religious oath, so obviously swearing by a god or gods doesn’t seem to be a guarantee of truth-telling…)
Incidentally, the Oath of Office for the President of the U.S. does NOT contain the phrase “so help me God” – check any copy of the Constitution. And yet, every President in memory has been sworn in with those words included, so technically all of them took an unconstitutional oath. (Can you imagine the flack it would cause among our superstitious citizens if a President REFUSED to add those words?)
The Straight Dope: How do courts swear in atheists?
Not so - President Pierce affirmed rather than swore.
Besides, I don’t see how the choice of the individual to add “so help me God” makes it unconstitutional. Article II of the Constitution itself refers to it as an “Oath or Affirmation”. Legally, the distinction between the two is that when a person takes an Oath, s/he is calling on God to witness his/her promise. Since the Constitution itself recognises that some individuals will wish to swear an Oath, a religious action, how does the decision of that individual to add an additional statement at the end, recognising the religious nature of the Oath, make it unconstitutional?
My GF’s dad worked as a court baliff for years, retiring only recently. I asked this same question, and he told me that they’d used a nonreligious oath for everyone for years.
–Patch