Bronston v. United States

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1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision holding that literally truthful testimony is not perjury

1973 United States Supreme Court case

Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352 (1973), is a seminal

United States Supreme Court decision strictly construing the federal perjury statute. Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote for a unanimous Court that responses to questions made under oath that relayed truthful information in and of themselves but were intended to mislead or evade the examiner could not be prosecuted. Instead, the criminal-justice system had to rely on more carefully worded follow-up questions.

The decision has been cited in many cases since then and has become the controlling legal standard of perjury in federal jurisprudence. It was invoked during Bill Clinton 's impeachment proceedings in 1998 as a defense to charges of perjury against him.

It has long been criticized for the loophole it creates in the perjury statutes as essentially allowing a witness to lie without consequences. Nevertheless, later Courts have refused to overrule or otherwise limit it despite some moves in that direction by lower courts.

Background of the case

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Samuel Bronston was a New York -based movie producer who, between 1959 and 1964, made films in various European countries as Samuel Bronston Productions , Inc., a company he wholly owned. He was a pioneer in using countries such as Spain to take advantage of lower production costs. As part of its business operations, the company maintained bank accounts in the countries in which it did business — 37 separate accounts in five different countries, it would be established later.

In 1964, after the epic _The Fall of the Roman Empire _ failed, the company filed for federal bankruptcy protection. Two years later, its owner was being questioned under oath at a creditors ' committee meeting about the company's overseas assets. It included the following exchange between Bronston and one of the lawyers for his creditors:

Q. Do you have any bank accounts in Swiss banks , Mr. Bronston?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have you ever?
A. The company had an account there for about six months, in Zürich .
Q. Have you any nominees who have bank accounts in Swiss banks?
A. No, sir.
Q. Have you ever?
A. No, sir.

All those answers were truthful, although the second one is not a direct answer to the question. It would later be discovered that Bronston personally had had an account with International Credit Bank in Geneva , on which he made deposits and drew checks totalling up to $180,000 during the five years in which the company was active and closed just before the bankruptcy filing. As a result, the matter was referred to federal prosecutors, who secured a perjury indictment against Bronston.

Trial

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The government contended that Bronston intentionally answered the second of the series of questions by referring to the company's account in Zurich instead of his own personal one, as the questioner had implied, to leave the impression that he did not have and never had had an account in Switzerland, which was not true. Jurors were instructed that they must consider the witness's state of mind, that if they found that Bronston "fully understood the questions put to him but nevertheless gave false answers knowing the same to be false", they should convict him. After seven hours of deliberations, during which they requested not only additional instructions but that the original instructions be read back to them, as well as reviewing several exhibits in the case, they returned a conviction.

Appeal

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On appeal, Bronston claimed the key question was imprecise and that he should not have been convicted for making an answer that was true and accurate. A divided court upheld the conviction on the grounds that "an answer containing half of the truth which also constitutes a lie by negative implication, when the answer is intentionally given in place of the responsive answer called for by a proper question, is perjury".

The circuit's chief judge , J. Edward Lumbard , dissented, arguing the proper remedy for such answers was "questioner's acuity". Bronston's attorneys filed for _certiorari _ from the Supreme Court, and got it in 1971.

Decision

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The Court heard arguments on November 15, 1972. Sheldon Elsen argued for Bronston, with Andrew Frey taking the federal government's side.

Less than two months later, the Court issued its brief ruling, unanimously siding with the appellant. While he conceded that Bronston's answer may have been intended to mislead, Burger felt it would be going far beyond Congress's intent to apply the statute that broadly. He considered Bronston's answer to be a "testimonial mishap that could readily have been reached with a single additional question by counsel alert — as every examiner ought to be — to the incongruity of petitioner's unresponsive answer", a point he reiterates several times throughout the opinion. Such an application also conflicted with the literal wording of the law, which defined perjury as willfully stating under oath any material matter which the witness does not believe to be true.

A casual listener might have believed from Bronston's answer that he himself had never had any Swiss bank accounts, he agreed. "But we are not dealing with casual conversation and the statute does not make it a criminal act for a witness to willfully state any material matter that implies any material matter that he does not believe to be true" since intent to mislead or evade might not be the underlying reason: "Under the pressures and tensions of interrogation, it is not uncommon for the most earnest witnesses to give answers that are not entirely responsive. Sometimes the witness does not understand the question, or may in an excess of caution or apprehension read too much or too little into it."

Witnesses, he understood, might also be reluctant to discuss personally embarrassing matters, particularly in a bankruptcy proceeding. "If a witness evades, it is the lawyer's responsibility to recognize the evasion and to bring the witness back to the mark, to flush out the whole truth with the tools of adversary examination." The trial jury's finding that Bronston had intended to mislead was of no consequence, and indeed should not have been a determination they were allowed to make:

A jury should not be permitted to engage in conjecture whether an unresponsive answer, true and complete on its face, was intended to mislead or divert the examiner; the state of mind of the witness is relevant only to the extent that it bears on whether "he does not believe [his answer] to be true." To hold otherwise would be to inject a new and confusing element into the adversary testimonial system we know. Witnesses would be unsure of the extent of their responsibility for the misunderstandings and inadequacies of examiners, and might well fear having that responsibility tested by a jury under the vague rubric of "intent to mislead" or "perjury by implication."

He reviewed the history of perjury, and recalled that when it first started being prosecuted, authorities realized it had to be narrowly construed, otherwise people would be deterred from testifying over fears of being prosecuted themselves. Existing case law supported that position as well.

"Precise questioning is imperative as a predicate for the offense of perjury", he said, one last time, a sentence frequently quoted since then.

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