The debate about what to do with a criminal defendant who wants to lie on the witness stand goes back a half-century, to a 1966 Michigan law review article written by a young law professor and former public defender named Monroe Freedman. Freedman argued that given a lawyer’s duties as he saw them to the client, to the legal system and, in his view, to find out the facts of the case without burying one’s head in the sand the best solution to what he called this "trilemma" was to put on the perjured testimony. Some people in Washington, D.C., where Freedman worked, were so outraged that they tried to get Freedman disciplined for having even suggested this solution.
Then in the early 1970s the American Bar Association approved a set of criminal law standards. Standard 7.7 called upon lawyers faced with a perjurious client to allow the testimony to occur, but only in the "narrative form," as opposed to the usual question-and-answer format. The lawyer was then to refrain from arguing this testimony to the jury. Initially, this method found some favor with institutionalized criminal defense organizations, such as public defender’s offices, which were searching for a way to take a position that walked the tightrope between "snitching off" one’s own client and permitting outright perjury.
