Are judges allowed to lie?
<p>Is it legal for a judge to lie?</p>
<p>For example; if a judge tells a condemned prisoner that he will be hanged at noon on one weekday in the following week, but that the execution would be a surprise, and the prisoner then reasons that it won't be a surprise since he has been told it would happen. Could the judge be prosecuted for lying?</p>

<h2>No</h2>
<p>Judges must behave judicially which means they must be disinterested<sup>1</sup> and unbiased. It is difficult to reconcile deliberately telling a known falsehood with that obligation.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding, even if a judge does lie in the course of their duties there is no remedy the aggrieved party can take against the judge due to the doctrine of judicial immunity. However, if the lie infects their decision, then that may be grounds for appeal on the basis that the party did not receive procedural fairness/natural justice.</p>
<p><sup>1</sup>Which has a very different meaning from uninterested.</p>

<p>As for the question of whether a judge can be prosecuted for lying,</p>
<h1>NO</h1>
<p>because judges enjoy judicial immunity, a type of sovereign immunity. Indeed, judges cannot even be <em>sued</em> for their judicial actions, see <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/435/349/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Stump v. Sparkman</a>, 435 U.S. 349. They can (potentially) be suspended by a competent authority, perhaps impeached, certainly overruled, but not even sued, see <a href="https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/502/9.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Mireles v. Waco</a>: &quot;a judge is immune from a suit for money damages&quot;. The closest one can come in the US is anything analogous to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris_v._Harvey_(1979)" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Harris v. Harvey</a>, where a judge was held liable for defamatory statements made outside outside the courtroom, not being acts normally performed by a judge (statements to the press).</p>
<p>In order to prosecute a person for a crime, there has to be a criminal law that prohibits and penalizes the action. Murder is an example: if a judge, or anyone else, were to murder a defendant, they could be prosecuted for murder. Lying in the context described is not a crime, so the judge cannot be prosecuted.</p>

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