Justices Deny Defendant’s Right to Lie : Ruling: The Supreme Court overturns a decision that said it is ‘basic to justice’ that the accused be allowed to take the stand and refute the charge.

In a decision that could make defendants reluctant to testify, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that a person who denies charges against him in court but is convicted may be subject to additional federal penalties for obstruction of justice.

The 9-0 ruling overturns a federal appeals court, which had ruled that a defendant’s right to deny his guilt without fear of punishment is “basic to justice.”

Writing for the high court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy said: “A defendant’s right to testify does not include a right to commit perjury.”

The decision reinstates a 51-month prison term for a West Virginia woman who denied being part of cocaine ring but was later convicted on multiple drug charges.

Tuesday’s ruling applies directly only to testimony in federal courts, but the decision makes clear that state judges also may impose stiffer sentences on defendants who lie.

Criminal law experts said that judges have long been able to impose harsher sentences on defendants who take the witness stand and perjure themselves during testimony about others. A bank robbery defendant who falsely accuses someone else of committing the crime, for example, could be sentenced to 15 years in prison, when perjury charges were added, rather than 10 years.

New U.S. sentencing guidelines incorporated this principle into federal law in 1988, saying that a defendant’s prison term could be “enhanced” for attempting to “impede or obstruct the administration of justice,” including by “testifying untruthfully” during the trial.

Virtually every U.S. appeals court has upheld such extra punishments as constitutional. Typically, however, this power to impose longer sentences has not been invoked in instances in which a defendant simply denies accusations against him.

“This means that any defendant has to think very hard about testifying. I think it also means that a defense lawyer has the responsibility to warn his client that, if you testify, you may well have your sentence enhanced,” said Ira Mickenberg, a criminal defense expert at the New York Law School.

In 1990, Sharon Dunnigan was tried and convicted of distributing cocaine in Charleston, W. Va. On the witness stand, she denied that she knew her co-conspirators or had ever bought, sold or used cocaine. A jury convicted her.

Under the sentencing guidelines, the judge could have sentenced her to about three years in prison. But after a motion from the prosecutors, U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhayer declared that Dunnigan “was untruthful at trial” and raised her sentence to 51 months in prison.

Two years ago, a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., rejected the higher prison term as unconstitutional. To permit an enhanced sentence for one who simply denies the charges puts “an intolerable burden upon the defendant’s right to testify in his own behalf,” the appeals court said.

But the Supreme Court disposed of that argument in a brief opinion in the case (U.S. vs. Dunnigan, 91-1300).

“Of course, not every accused who testifies at trial and is convicted will incur an enhanced sentence,” Kennedy said. But it is reasonable to permit a stiffer punishment “for the willful presentation of false testimony.”