"Testilying" in reality and fiction

This NY Times article about cops cutting corners or flat-out lying to get a conviction should offer no surprises to readers of crime fiction or students of human nature. I just finished reading Denise Mina's fine The Red Road, the plot of which turns on an egregious example of testilying. Mina is a great writer of crime novels for a number of reasons, including her command of the language, plotting and pacing, ability to get inside the heads of her characters, and sympathy for the bad guys as well as the good guys. Sympathy, that is, with one pretty consistent exception: She– like her detective hero Alex Morrow– has no sympathy for the testilying cop. In the interest of fictional even-handedness, perhaps she should. In the interest of justice, she cannot.