The Fed then charged Burge with “perjury”.
Burge's incompetent Civil lawyer failed to instruct Burge to take the “fifth amendment” on each interrogatory response.
Burge would never have been charged with perjury had Burge only taken the fifth amendment in response to his civil interrogatories. That was the first mistake that Burge's stupid civil lawyers made.
The second mistake Burge's criminal lawyers made, that buried Burge, was to allow him to take the stand and testify in his perjury trial. The one jury member later said that Berg's "nervousness on stand was clincher in conviction!" That failure to properly advise Burge not to take the stand in his criminal trial lead to his conviction for perjury and will result in additional perjury charges now that Burge was found guilty.
SIDEBAR: This case stands for the serious proposition that perjurious responses in civil interrogatories can lead to criminal convictions. In a related type of case. There is evidence that a Bryan Cave senior partner Steven R. Smith and his bag man Michael Werich could be charged with “false swearing” and subornation of perjury for providing a false affidavit in the Stoller v. Countrywide Civil litigation in Cook County, Illinois. A petition for indirect criminal contempt has been filed against Bryan Cave, Steven Smith and Michael Werich. News for Guilty Ex-cop Jon burge convicted of lying ...