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Man goes on trial in rare perjury case Accused of lying on firearm form By ALBERTO ENRIQUEZ A rare perjury prosecution gets under way today in Jackson County Court just as President Clinton faces a possible impeachment vote on perjury among other grounds. Richard Devere Grant, 34, goes on trial today on a charge that he gave false sworn testimony. Specifically, he is alleged to have concealed his criminal past when he returned on March 23 to the Trading Emporium in Medford to reclaim a gun he had hocked earlier. Jackson County District Attorney Mark Huddleston summed up the prosecution bluntly on Wednesday: "If you're a criminal, and you lie about your past, they're going to go after you." By law, felons are prohibited from possessing firearms. Grant has two previous felony convictions, one for drug possession and the other for possession of a weapon, both in 1995. Many people associate perjury with lying in court, but cases like Grant's are by far more typical. "Perjury is `a false sworn statement,"' Huddleston said. "There are many cases where you can give a false sworn statement out of court." But whether in or out of court, actual perjury prosecutions are scarce and no one keeps count. "We don't have any way of finding that out with our case-tracking computers," Huddleston said. "They're so rare that we don't really have a way of tracking how many there are." He estimated the actual number of perjury prosecutions at no more than one or two a year. In part, the scarcity of perjury prosecutions is a matter of priorities. If every statement later proved false were prosecuted, the county would have to hire several more deputy district attorneys, Huddleston said. But it also reflects the relative difficulty of proving perjury. "Was the conduct criminally negligent -- or only reckless?" Huddleston said. "Was the question misunderstood? It has to be black and white." In Grant's case, Medford police say that the Trading Emporium required Grant to sign a "firearms transition record" before taking his pawned gun out of hock. The form asks, "Have you been convicted of a crime for which a judge could have given you a one-year sentence?" Grant wrote, "No." "If you lied in court that can be fairly difficult to prove," Huddleston said. "But if you lie about your past that can be fairly easy to prove." As for the threatened perjury trial that has gripped the attention of the nation, Huddleston declined to hazard a guess on the chances for Clinton's impeachment. Were the facts clear, it would appear to be a prosecutable offense, he said. But much depends on exactly what was asked, how he replied, and whether in fact, Clinton -- as he has claimed -- dodged the questions. Huddleston said he had not heard of another case where lying about one's sex life had been prosecuted as perjury, then added, "It's not usually an issue, though." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA