There seems to be agreement that false accusations (as far as accusations of a crime are concerned) need to be dealt with harshly, as a deterrent. But this could easily backfire by making a false accuser even more reluctant to recant his or her false accusation later on down the road, for fear of punishment. This would then cause innocent people to be locked up in jail for even longer.
So where should we draw the line as far as penalties for making a false accusation are concerned? How much is enough to deter and punish, but not so harsh as to prevent a false accuser from recanting?
If we follow the principle that it’s more important to protect the innocent than punish the guilty, the best course would be to not punish false accusations*. As you note, any punishment for false accusations acts as a deterrent to recanting a false accusation. And that means innocent people suffer under an unrecanted false accusation. We should be doing all we can to encourage people to come forward and recant false accusations in order to exonerate the innocent people they accused - even at the cost of letting the false accusers go unpunished after their recanting.
If you were in prison based on a false accusation, which would you want more? To have the false accusation be recanted so you could be released? Or to have the person who falsely accused you punished?
*I’m talking here about situations where the false accuser steps forward and recants. If the false accuser sticks with their story and it’s proven by other means that they lied, then I have no problem punishing them for what they did.
This could let people game the system, though. Make a false accusation, wait until the victim has stewed in jail a while and his/her life is ruined, then recant and get off scot-free.
This is still better than not recanting ever.
Yeah, that’s the tough part. We don’t want to have a system that deters recantation of false accusations, just as we do not want it to be an entirely casual lark to have someone be forever branded with every Google search for their name coming up with some heinous crime.
And for that matter do we want the recantation from the accuser to suffice to exonerate or at least to reopen the case? Am I remembering it wrong or does it not happen as it is, that a witness or accuser may come along offering to recant yet the courts and DAs answer back: “Nope, sorry, case closed, appeals exhausted. You wanna make us admit we got the wrong guy, then we’ll go after you for lying to us”?
Which of course brings us to the other element to this: ideally, if things worked the way they are supposed to, the justice system should itself suss out the false accusation earlier in the process. Things aren’t always working the way they’re supposed to, are they?
How about just increasing the penalties for perjury and false accusations that are discovered other than through recantation?
Yes, but changing the outcome doesn’t just change people’s actions after the false accusation, it might also change people’s likelihood of making false accusations in the first place.
This change would lower the cost to people of using the legal system as a weapon, which might increase the number of false accusations made.