Law Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for legal professionals, students, and others with experience or interest in law. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
Its often a joke that politicians say "I don't recall doing X" when being accused of something.
In English saying I don't recall implies that you could be mistaken. But literally speaking, at any point anything you say could be incorrect because you're human and memory is imperfect.
In the US, is specifically prefacing a statement with "To the best of my recollection ..." or "I don't recall..." offer any kind of benefit in terms of committing to the statement?
"I don't recall" will protect you from perjury only if it's true.
Let me try an example. You're asked: "Did Mr. Blatter hand you an envelope full of cash?"
You say: "Not to my recollection."
Now the government introduces a videotape of you receiving and counting the money, and a thank-you note you wrote to Blatter saying "Thanks for the awesome bribe!"
You can defend yourself from perjury charges if you can convince the finder of fact that you had forgotten all of those things...but it's not very likely, is it?
"I don't recall" isn't a magic bullet. It's like any other statement: it's perjury unless it's true.
To address an earlier answer that has since been deleted (together with my disagreement comment)... Some people suggested that "I do not recall" is an example of Taking the Fifth.
But we respectfully disagree. In the "I do not recall" statement, one is alleging that one has no recollection of a certain event or facts, which is clearly incriminating in case it could be proven that one, in fact, did have such recollection, or must have had. It is also clear that it's entirely different from maintaining silence or explicitly saying only enough to the effect of doing so.
Of course, at first sight, proving someone's faulty or perfect memory is supposedly less straightforward than an outright denial of fact, but it's not any less of a lie than an outright denial, so, as another answer by chapka points out, it's not that difficult to introduce the evidence to the contrary of the "I do not recall" statements (videotapes and a thank-you-for-your-bribe notes), and, I must point out, if you must defend against such evidence knowing full well that your original "I do not recall" has been false anyways, you might as well be committing another perjury.
As to whether it's useful or not generally? If you must answer a bunch of questions, and only certain answers are prefaced with, "I do not recall", then it arguably might have some effect of what you do and don't remember. However, if you preface every single answer with such a statement, then it starts being somewhat of a farce.
