False Testimony Defense Lawyers

Perjury is not prosecuted while the original case is still live: the file is usually opened afterwards, when the court that noticed the contradiction refers the matter. Art. 458.1 CP punishes a witness who departs from the truth in judicial proceedings with 6 months to 2 years' imprisonment and a 3-to-6-month fine. Where the false testimony is given against the defendant in criminal proceedings, the penalties are 1 to 3 years and a 6-to-12-month fine, and where a conviction followed from that testimony the penalties are raised by one degree (Art. 458.2 CP). Experts and interpreters face those penalties in their upper half plus special disqualification for 6 to 12 years (Art. 459 CP), and merely altering the truth through evasion, inaccuracy or silence carries a 6-to-12-month fine (Art. 460 CP).

• Ask for the full recording of your evidence. The accusation is normally built on a single sentence from the transcript. The full recording shows the question that prompted it and its context, which is where almost all these cases are decided.
• Separate a memory failure from a lie. The offence requires knowingly departing from the truth on essential facts. Imprecision, confusing dates or partial recollection do not amount to Art. 458 CP and are usually proved with contemporaneous documents.
• Do not discuss the matter with the parties to the original case. Any later conversation with the party who called you as a witness is produced as evidence of collusion and can open a second front for obstruction of justice (Art. 464 CP).
• Recover whatever supported your account when you testified. Messages, emails, diaries or work records from the date of the events. Showing your evidence matched what was on record at the time defeats the mental element of the offence.

The crime of false testimony (Arts. 458 to 462 of the Spanish Criminal Code) is one of the pillars of Chapter VI of Title XX on crimes against the Administration of Justice. The protected legal interest is the proper jurisdictional function: the reliability of the evidence on which every judicial decision rests. When a witness, expert or interpreter deliberately lies about facts essential to the ruling, it not only harms the directly affected party but erodes the entire system of guarantees. Consolidated Supreme Court case-law has refined the elements of the type with a demanding canon: it requires direct intent, conscious falsehood about relevant facts and potential capacity to alter the outcome of the proceedings.

The Criminal Code distinguishes several modalities graduated according to the type of proceedings and the active subject. Art. 458.1 sanctions the witness who lies in judicial proceedings; Art. 458.2 aggravates the penalty when the testimony is given in criminal proceedings against the defendant and even more when it contributes to a conviction. Art. 459 equates experts and interpreters who willfully lie in their reports or translations, adding professional disqualification. Art. 460 typifies substantial alteration of the statement without openly lying: maliciously omitting essential facts or changing them. Art. 461 punishes the knowing presentation of false witnesses, experts or interpreters and the inducement to false testimony. And Art. 462 establishes the so-called "golden key": timely retraction by the witness who testified falsely in criminal proceedings, telling the truth so that it takes effect before judgment is handed down in those proceedings, exempts from punishment.

Penalties are strictly graduated. False testimony under Art. 458.1 carries 6 months to 2 years' prison and 3 to 6 months' fine. When given in criminal proceedings against the defendant (Art. 458.2), the penalty rises to 1 to 3 years' prison and 6 to 12 months' fine; if it has led to a conviction, the penalty is imposed in its upper half. For experts and interpreters (Art. 459), the foregoing penalties apply in their upper half with special disqualification of 6 to 12 years. The substantial alteration of Art. 460 sanctions with 6 months to 2 years' prison and fine. The inducement and presentation of false witnesses of Art. 461 follow the regime of the false-testimony author. Alongside the principal penalty, derived civil liability operates: if the victim has suffered unjust conviction, pretrial detention or property damage, the false witness responds financially, with amounts that in serious cases may exceed €100,000.

Technical defense is built on five axes consolidated by case-law. The first is the absence of intent: false testimony requires consciousness and will to lie; memory error, perception distorted by trial stress or human fallibility exclude the type. The second is the irrelevance of the fact: the lie must concern elements essential to the ruling; peripheral details or circumstantial ornaments are atypical. The third is the timely retraction of Art. 462 CP: if the witness who testified falsely in criminal proceedings corrects the statement and tells the truth so that it takes effect before judgment is handed down in those proceedings, they are exempt from punishment; where the false testimony has already deprived another person of their liberty, the penalties one degree lower are imposed instead. Technical management of the procedural moment is decisive. The fourth is insurmountable fear of Art. 20.6 CP: if the witness lied under serious, real and imminent threat, the exemption may apply. The fifth is the exemption for kinship of Art. 416 LECrim: spouse, ascendants, descendants and siblings of the accused are not obliged to testify against them; if they declare falsely to protect them, Supreme Court doctrine significantly modulates the criminal response.

In current forensic practice, false-testimony proceedings grow linked to gender violence cases (instrumentalized complaints in marital crises), labor dismissals (company or worker witnesses with pre-built narratives), inheritance conflicts and high-value civil litigation. The reform by Organic Law 14/2022 and the consolidation of constitutional case-law on witness evidence have tightened the judicial examination of consistency, persistence and plausibility of testimony. At Alonso Sala we intervene both in defense of those accused of false testimony and as private prosecution when our client has been the victim of mendacious testimony. We articulate psychological credibility expert reports (SVA-CBCA methodology), forensic-linguistic analysis of transcripts and procedural chronologies that allow detection of objective contradictions. We treat each case with the conviction that procedural integrity is a legal interest of the highest value and that the client's freedom in these crimes usually depends on a single factor: the timely technical management of retraction or, failing that, the rigorous proof of absence of intent.

Both the basic offence of Art. 458.1 CP (maximum 2 years' prison) and the aggravated form of Art. 458.2 CP (maximum 3 years when given against the defendant in a criminal case) become time-barred after 5 years. This follows from the residual clause of Art. 131 CP, which sets that period for all offences whose maximum penalty does not exceed five years and which are not minor offences or insults/slander. Time runs from the day the false statement was given and is interrupted once proceedings are directed against the alleged offender. Checking the exact date of the statement and the validity of each act interrupting limitation is one of the defence's first steps: in old or protracted cases, limitation can operate as an absolute defence.

All three offences protect the administration of justice, but they are committed at different moments and in different procedural positions. False accusation under Art. 456 CP is committed when proceedings are set in motion: attributing to a specific person, knowing it to be false or with reckless disregard for the truth, facts that would constitute a criminal offence, before a judicial or administrative officer under a duty to investigate them. Simulation of an offence under Art. 457 CP points at no one: the perpetrator pretends to be responsible for or the victim of an offence, or reports a non-existent one, thereby triggering proceedings. False testimony under Arts. 458 to 460 CP presupposes pending proceedings and is committed when testifying in them as a witness, expert or interpreter.

The penalties show why classification matters. Art. 456 CP grades the sanction by what was alleged: six months to two years' prison and a fine of twelve to twenty-four months if a serious offence was alleged; a fine of twelve to twenty-four months for a less serious offence; and a fine of three to six months for a minor offence. Art. 457 CP provides a single penalty of a fine of six to twelve months. In false testimony, Art. 458.1 CP punishes with six months to two years' prison and a fine of three to six months the witness who lies in judicial proceedings, while Art. 458.2 CP raises the penalty to one to three years' prison and a fine of six to twelve months where the testimony is given against the defendant in criminal proceedings, with the next degree up if a conviction followed as a result.

Two further provisions are often overlooked. Art. 459 CP imposes the above penalties in their upper half on experts and interpreters who maliciously depart from the truth in their report or translation, adding special disqualification from their profession, trade, employment or public office for six to twelve years. Art. 460 CP contains the mitigated form: anyone who, without substantially departing from the truth, alters it through evasions, inaccuracies or by withholding relevant facts or data known to them faces a fine of six to twelve months and, where applicable, suspension from public employment or office, profession or trade for six months to three years. Reclassifying a charge from Art. 458.2 to Art. 460 changes the picture entirely, since the custodial penalty disappears.

False accusation also carries a specific procedural safeguard: under Art. 456.2 CP no proceedings may be brought against the complainant except after a final judgment or a final dismissal or discontinuance order from the court that heard the alleged offence, which must also act of its own motion where the main case reveals sufficient indications that the accusation was false. If the original case is still live, a complaint under Art. 456 CP is premature. You can read more on our pages about false accusation (Art. 456 CP) and simulation of an offence (Art. 457 CP).