Talk:Bronston v. United States

Propose External Links to F.2d

Should external links to the full text of cited lower federal court opinions be added to references? The full text is available from openjurist.org, which is devoted to providing open access to judicial opnions. So, for example, one could link United States v. Tonelli, 577 F.2d 194 (3d Cir. 1978). Such links seem to me to follow the guidelines for external links and reliable sources, but I welcome discussion on the point. Worldbruce (talk) 21:01, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

I think that's entirely appropriate. I noticed another user has removed several of your links to openjurist and cited WP:EL as justification. WP:EL seems irrelevant, so I've reincorporated your edits. --Osbojos (talk) 23:46, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

External links modified

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The initial paragraph mischaracterizes the holding in Bronston

The decision did not hold 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, it held (quoting the syllabus) that "Federal perjury statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1621, does not reach a witness' answer that is literally true, but unresponsive, even assuming the witness intends to mislead his questioner by the answer, and even assuming the answer is arguably 'false by negative implication.'" (Emphasis added)

The unresponsiveness is critical to the decision. That's what should lead an alert questioner to follow up or demand a responsive answer.

Quoting from footnote 3 of the decision:

The District Court gave the following example "as an illustration only":

"[I]f it is material to ascertain how many times a person has entered a store on a given day and that person responds to such a question by saying five times when in fact he knows that he entered the store 50 times that day, that person may be guilty of perjury even though it is technically true that he entered the store five times."

The illustration given by the District Court is hardly comparable to petitioner's answer; the answer "five times" is responsive to the hypothetical question, and contains nothing to alert the questioner that he may be side-tracked. See infra at 409 U. S. 358. Moreover, it is very doubtful that an answer which, in response to a specific quantitative inquiry, baldly understates a numerical fact can be described as even "technically true." Whether an answer is true must be determined with reference to the question it purports to answer, not in isolation. An unresponsive answer is unique in this respect, because its unresponsiveness, by definition, prevents its truthfulness from being tested in the context of the question -- unless there is to be speculation as to what the unresponsive answer "implies." See infra at 409 U. S. 359.

I note in passing how this undermines the Clinton defense claims that Clinton did not commit perjury because his statements were technically true. His statements were not unresponsive, and they were technically true only in the same sense that the statement that there were five entries when there were 50 is technically true.Thinkatron (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 20:51, 30 April 2021 (UTC)