ROGAN CITES STATISTICS ON PERJURY.

Byline: Peter Hartlaub Daily News Staff Writer

Rep. James E. Rogan, a Pasadena Republican, used statistics as a weapon against President Clinton on Friday, calling on his experience as a prosecutor and judge to show punishment for perjury is not nearly a rarity.

Rogan told his colleagues during debate on the floor of Congress that about 700 people have been convicted in federal court for perjury-related crimes since Clinton became president, with 115 now imprisoned. Later, he pointed out that the figures are much higher on the state level.

``In my home state of California, since Bill Clinton became president, there have been some 16,000 prosecutions for perjury,'' Rogan told his colleagues. ``So the suggestion that perjury would not be brought in an appropriate case is incorrect.''

Federal and state officials said Rogan's figures check out and may even be a little low.

Coincidentally, in Ventura on Friday, a man pleaded no contest to a charge of perjury and faces up to four years in prison on allegations he forged a veterinarian's name on wildlife documents.

While most perjury cases involve documents, people have been prosecuted for such crimes as deceiving a grand jury on the witness stand and lying about assets in a divorce case.

The California Department of Justice reports there were 15,680 perjury prosecutions in the state between 1993 and 1997, and there probably have been thousands more this year.

Southwestern University law professor Robert Pugsley called perjury an underprosecuted crime that was set up as a deterrent. In light of recent events, he expects perjury will get a lot more attention.

``I would imagine, at least in the short term, this Clinton deal will stimulate a rash of perjury prosecutions and make people aware of what perjury is,'' Pugsley said.

Officials said a large chunk of the California prosecutions came from Los Angeles County, where Rogan worked for six years in the 1980s as a deputy district attorney in the hard-core gang murder unit.

``In the past five years, we have prosecuted several hundred perjury cases,'' said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office.

Gibbons said most of them are perjury of document cases, in which someone signs papers under penalty of perjury. Cases involving witness-stand testimony are much more rare, Gibbons said.

In contrast, at the U.S. Attorney's Office, perjury cases have been few and far between.

Department of Justice statistician Jon Scalia said the federal government undertakes about 130 perjury prosecutions per year nationwide. There were 139 in 1997, with the average sentence at about 27 months, Scalia said.

U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek said he knows of only two perjury prosecutions in the Central District, which covers most of the Southland and is the largest district in the nation.

``To my knowledge, nobody prosecuted in this office is in custody for perjury charges,'' Mrozek said.

If the number of perjury cases seems small - less than 10 percent of state prosecutions and less than 1 percent of federal prosecutions - perhaps it's because they are very hard to prosecute.

To get a conviction, law enforcers need to prove:

The defendant knew what he was asserting was false;

He intended the information to be false;

And the false information was material to the case.