Is there a way for someone to say something in such a way that it would be a jailable offence to lie?

Question

I was thinking about how for many types of insurance claims, you have to attach a police report. So if you had an expensive watch, and it got stolen, you can get paid by your insurance, but you have to submit a police report of it being stolen. The idea is that if you wanted to lie to get insurance money, if caught, not only would it be fraud, but also filing a false police report, which is a bad crime. (not just normal theft insurance, but also Airbnb, if you lose your Swiss passport, if you lose your suitcase)

(I know that this is an overkill, but) Let's say that I was late to work and I wanted to prove to my boss that I was honest about the bus not arriving when it should have. Is there something that I can do to claim that the bus didn't arrive. But, make the claim so strong, that if I'm caught lying I can be jailed?

This is for a story, so any interesting country's law is okay.

Answer 1

The most common ways to convert a written statement into the criminal offense of perjury are to have someone prepare either a statement made under an oath administered by a suitable official (usually a notary) called an "affidavit", or a statement that says it is made under penalty of perjury (without an official presiding) which is usually called a "declaration".

In many contexts (including filings in federal courts and in the courts of Utah and Colorado, for example), affidavits and declarations filed in court are equivalent in effect. In other contexts, such as filings in real estate records, affidavits are legally effective, but declarations are not.

Of course, in many cases, lying about a material matter with an intent to personally gain from doing so is a criminal offense, such as "fraud" even if it is not contained in an affidavit or declaration. Often there are a mix of laws that criminalize particular kinds of false statements not made under oath (e.g. false police reports) and a general criminal fraud statute.

Answer 2

Prelude

This was tagged perjury. Perjury is extremely narrow. To be perjury, a statement needs to be in an official proceeding, and even then, there are usually quite high hurdles. As a general rule of thumb what is considered perjury in most jurisdictions, you

• need to be a sworn or otherwise informed witness in a case,
• your testimony needs to be material and
• you need to deliberately tell a the untruth.

germany

In general, a witness is not sworn in but is only demanded to tell the truth under threat of punishment for "uneidliche Falschaussage" § 153 StGB (unsworn wrong testimony) with 3 months to 5 years of jail hanging over the head.

If the testimony is put into question or super highly material, the witness can be sworn in (vereidigt) and then saying anything that isn't the whole truth is perjury (Meineid, § 154 StGB). Punishment here is *at least a year if convicted, no upper limit given. As no maximum length is set in the paragraph, the general maximum punishment (§ 38 StGB) of 15 years the statute of limitations being 20 years (§ 78 Abs. 3 Nr. 2 StGB).

Setup

So, we need to make it absolutely material that your excuse to the boss becomes impeached to the point you are put under oath in a trial...

Let's say you tell your boss you are late because you helped in an accident on Route A while you were actually taking route B and were just late. Your Boss just happens to have heard the news that the police is looking for the lone samaritan that helped there to try to identify the runaway driver that caused the accident on Route A.

The boss instructs you, that you are given free time to report that to the police on his dime, because he wants the driver found. You make a report of a neon green opel Tigra with racing stripes and invent one digit of the number plate. By happenstance the police finds a matching car that just happened to be on Route A in roughly the right timeframe as the driver was staying somewhere in the the area. The police makes the arrest and they manage to find enough evidence to bring charges for "negligent killing".

The court calls you as a witness, you testify the same thing as to the police, but things don't seem to match up with the other testimony and experts. So you are put under oath and claim it was clearly defendant who did the drive by. Defendant is convicted for that 'evidence' for negligent killing while driving and punished for 5 years under § 222 StGB.

Some years after the trial, someone boasts in a bar on Route A that they once drove so reckless and high, right out of the door of the bar, in their vintage blue Buik 8, that another car rammed a tree and burst into flames while a second escaped just in time. The bar owner calls in the police and the guy is arrested. He gleefully repeats his testimony at the station. Obviously, the pissed prosecutor hears of this, brings a Wiederaufnahmeverfahren to fix the injustice against the Tigra-driver and have him declared innocent (and compensated), and then files charges against both the Buik 8 driver: murder against the driver, because his depraved mind, and you for perjury under oath, which resulted in someone innocent getting jailed and deprived of rights.

The car that avoided the Buik driver? Well, that was the good samaritan. If you need a reason why he never was found: police thought you were the helper. But after helping the samaritan drove into the sunset to be never seen again (and probably never heard of the case).