The Price of a Forgotten Past
A woman is jailed in Seattle for perjury after she lied to hide her past during a lawsuit against the city, exposing the harsh hypocrisy of the legal system.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Gladys Johnson lives in Seattle. Her present address is the King County jail. Several months ago she was severely injured through the negligence of the city, her attorney claimed. She brought a personal damage suit against the city of Seattle. The city's lawyers found that years ago in the East, she had been married before and had lived a life of struggle. For nine years, she had lived a blameless life. She was happily married, and her husband knew her past and was helping her to live it down. When opposing lawyers asked her point-blank about her buried past, she denied it. The law called it perjury and sentenced her to jail. It had nothing to do with the city's liability for the injury, but it let the city off the hook. Her husband pleaded to serve her sentence for her, to no avail. Gladys Johnson lied, and she must pay the penalty, said the law.
“Is there one law for the rich and another for the poor? The law points to Gladys Johnson in the King county jail and answers, No.”
This story highlights the historic legal habit of scouring a victim's personal history to discredit them during civil litigation—a tactic that remains a source of trauma and injustice in modern legal proceedings today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.