La escasa persecución del delito de falso testimonio: una constatación paradójica

espanolEl delito de falso testimonio ha estado presente y sigue estandolo en los ordenamientos juridicos de todo tiempo y lugar. Podria decirse que alla donde existe un proceso judicial minimamente formalizado se ha advertido la necesidad de dotarlo de proteccion a traves de la incriminacion del falso testimonio. Ahora bien, esta universal tipificacion del delito de falso testimonio –que parece evidenciar la importante funcion de tutela que le atribuyen los distintos legisladores– contrasta paradojicamente con los niveles relativamente escasos de persecucion de este delito que se constatan en la practica de los tribunales. Para evidenciar y tratar de dimensionar este fenomeno –la escasa persecucion de este delito pese a no ser infrecuente su comision–, acudiremos al analisis de los datos estadisticos disponibles, asi como a las fuentes doctrinales y a los pronunciamientos de los tribunales. A la luz del analisis efectuado se sugieren nuevas lineas de investigacion y algunas cuestiones que requeririan una reformulacion de la politica criminal en relacion a la persecucion del falso testimonio. EnglishThe crime of false testimony has been and continues to be a figure of great relevance in the legal systems of all times. It could be said that whenever there is a minimally formalized process, there is a need to protect it through the incrimination of false testimony. Thus, in the different legal cultures, legislators from all over the world continue to punish the untruthful witness in order to preserve the proper administration of justice. However, as a paradox, despite the universal typification of the crime of false testimony -which seems to demonstrate the important role that the different legislators confer to this crime - in practice, there is a relatively low rate of prosecution for such crime. In order to measure the dimension of this phenomenon and demonstrate the low prosecution of this crime as well as the high level of dark figures, this paper uses the available statistical data, the doctrinal sources and the case-law. Finally, several relevant issues emerged from the analysis of the different implications and explanatory hypotheses concerning this paradoxical ascertainment. All these issues suggest the need to adopt new lines of research in an area of an undoubted significance for any justice system.