OCTOBER TERM, 1972
Opinion of the Court

409 U. S.

BRONSTON v. UNITED STATESCERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR
THE SECOND CIRCUIT

No. 71-1011. Argued November 15, 1972Decided January 10, 1973
Federal perjury statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1621, does not reach a witness'answer that is literally true, but unresponsive, even assuming thewitness intends to mislead his questioner by the answer, and evenassuming the answer is arguably "false by negative implication."
A perjury prosecution is not, in our adversary system, the primary
safeguard against errant testimony; given the incongruity of anunresponsive answer, it is the questioner's burden to frame hisinterrogation acutely to elicit the precise information he seeks.
Pp. 357-362.
453 F. 2d 555, reversed.
BURGER, C. J.,

delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court.

Sheldon H. Elsen argued the cause for petitioner.
With him on the briefs were Lewis Shapiro and John S.
Martin, Jr.
Andrew L. Frey argued the cause for the United States.
With him on the brief were Solicitor General Griswold,
Assistant Attorney General Petersen, Beatrice Rosen-

berg, and Marshall Tamor Golding.
MR. CHIEF JUSTICE BURGER delivered

the opinion of

the Court.
We granted the writ in this case to consider a narrow
but important question in the application of the federal
perjury statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1621: ' whether a witness
1 18 U. S. C. § 1621 provides:"Whoever, having taken an oath before a competent tribunal,
officer, or person, in any case in which a law of the United States
authorizes an oath to be administered, that he will testify, declare,

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Opinion of the Court

may be convicted of perjury for an answer, under oath,that is literally true but not responsive to the question
asked and arguably misleading by negative implication.
Petitioner is the sole owner of Samuel Bronston Productions, Inc., a company that between 1958 and 1964,
produced motion pictures in various European locations.
For these enterprises, Bronston Productions opened bankaccounts in a number of foreign countries; in 1962,
for example, it had 37 accounts in five countries. As
president of Bronston Productions, petitioner supervisedtransactions involving the foreign bank accounts.
In June 1964, Bronston Productions petitioned foran arrangement with creditors under Chapter XI of
the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 701 et seq. On June 10,
1966, a referee in bankruptcy held a § 21 (a) hearing todetermine, for the benefit of creditors, the extent andlocation of the company's assets.2 Petitioner's perjury
depose, or certify truly, or that any written testimony, declaration,
deposition, or certificate by him subscribed, is true, willfully andcontrary to such oath states or subscribes any material matter which
he does not believe to be true, is guilty of perjury, and shall, except asotherwise expressly provided by law, be fined not more than $2,000
or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. This section isapplicable whether the statement or subscription is made within orwithout the United States."
2 Under § 334 of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U. S. C. § 734, the court
must hold a first meeting of creditors within a limited period of timeafter the Chapter XI petition is filed. Section 336, 11 U. S. C. § 736,
provides that the judge or court-appointed referee shall presideat the meeting and "shall examine the debtor or cause him to
be examined and hear witnesses on any matter relevant to theproceeding."
Section 21 (a) of the Act, 11 U. S. C. § 44 (a), is applicable to a
Chapter XI proceeding because it is a provision of Chapters I
through VII "not inconsistent with or in conflict with the provisionsof [Chapter XI]." 11 U. S. C. § 702. Section 21 (a) provides, inpertinent part, that "[t]he court may, upon application of any
officer, bankrupt, or creditor, by order require any designatedOCTOBER TERM, 1972
Opinion of the Court

409 U. S.

conviction was founded on the answers given by him as
a witness at that bankruptcy hearing, and in particularon the following colloquy with a lawyer for a creditorof Bronston Productions:"Q. Do you have any bank accounts in Swissbanks, Mr. Bronston?
"A. No, sir.
"Q. Have you ever?
"A. The company had an account there for about
six months, in Zurich.
"Q. Have you any nominees who have bank accounts in Swiss banks?
"A. No, sir.
"Q. Have you ever?
"A. No, sir."
It is undisputed that for a period of nearly five years,
between October 1959 and June 1964, petitioner had apersonal bank account at the International Credit Bankin Geneva, Switzerland, into which he made deposits
and upon which he drew checks totaling more than$180,000. It is likewise undisputed that petitioner's
answers were literally truthful. (a) Petitioner did not at
the time of questioning have a Swiss bank account.
(b) Bronston Productions, Inc., did have the accountin Zurich described by petitioner. (c) Neither at the time
persons . . . to appear before the court . . . to be examined concerning the acts, conduct, or property of a bankrupt." Numerous
statements of the broad scope of a § 21 (a) inquiry are collected in 2 W. Collier, Bankruptcy 21.11 (14th ed. 1971). The
officers of a bankrupt may be required to undergo a § 21 (a) examination even if they are not still officers at the time of filing. Id.,
21.09. If it appears that the interest of a witness is adverse to theparty calling him to testify, under § 21 (j), 11 U. S. C. § 44 (j), theparty may examine the witness as if under cross-examination, and theexamining party is not bound by the witness' testimony. 1A W. Collier, Bankruptcy 5.22 (14th ed. 1972).

BRONSTON v. UNITED STATES
352

Opinion of the Courtof questioning nor before did petitioner have nominees
who had Swiss accounts. The Government's prosecution for perjury went forward on the theory that inorder to mislead his questioner, petitioner answered thesecond question with literal truthfulness but unresponsively addressed his answer to the company's assets andnot to his own-thereby implying that he had no personal Swiss bank account at the relevant time.
At petitioner's trial, the District Court instructed thejury that the "basic issue" was whether petitioner "spoke
his true belief." Perjury, the court stated, "necessarily
involves the state of mind of the accused" and "essentiallyconsists of wilfully testifying to the truth of a factwhich the defendant does not believe to be true"; petitioner's testimony could not be found "wilfully" false
unless at the time his testimony was given petitioner"fully understood the questions put to him but nevertheless gave false answers knowing the same to be false."
The court further instructed the jury that if petitioner did not understand the question put to him
and for that reason gave an unresponsive answer, he
could not be convicted of perjury. Petitioner could,
however, be convicted if he gave an answer "not literally
false but when considered in the context in which it
was given, nevertheless constitute [d] a false statement."'
3 The District Court gave the following example "as an illustration
only":"[I]f it is material to ascertain how many times a person hasentered a store on a given day and that person responds to sucha question by saying five times when in fact he knows that heentered 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 sidetracked. See infra, at 358. Moreover, it is very

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409 U. S.

The jury began its deliberations at 11:30 a. m. Several
times it requested exhibits or additional instructions
from the court, and at one point, at the request of thejury, the District Court repeated its instructions in full.
At 6:10 p. m., the jury returned its verdict, finding petitioner guilty on the count of perjury before us today
and not guilty on another charge not here relevant.
In the Court of Appeals, petitioner contended, as hehad in post-trial motions before the District Court, thatthe key question was imprecise and suggestive of various
interpretations. In addition, petitioner contended thathe could not be convicted of perjury on the basis of
testimony that was concededly truthful, however unresponsive. A divided Court of Appeals held that thequestion was readily susceptible of a responsive reply
and that it adequately tested the defendant's belief inthe veracity of his answer. The Court of Appeals further held that, "[f]or the purposes of 18 U. S. C. § 1621,
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." 453 F. 2d555, 559. In this Court, petitioner renews his attack on
the specificity of the question asked him and the legal
sufficiency of his answer to support a conviction for
perjury. The problem of the ambiguity of the question
is not free from doubt, but we need not reach that issue.
doubtful that an answer which, in response to a specific quantitative inquiry, baldly understates a numerical fact can be describedas 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 tobe speculation as to what the unresponsive answer "implies." Seeinfra, at 359.

BRONSTON v. UNITED STATES
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Opinion of the Court

Even assuming, as we do, that the question asked petitioner specifically focused on petitioner's personal bankaccounts, we conclude that the federal perjury statutecannot be construed to sustain a conviction based on petitioner's answer.
The statute, 18 U. S. C. § 1621, substantially identicalin its relevant language to its predecessors for nearlya century, is "a federal statute enacted in an effort
to keep the course of justice free from the pollution of perjury." United States v. Williams, 341 U. S.
58, 68 (1951). We have held that the general federal
perjury provision is applicable to federal bankruptcy
proceedings. Hammer v. United States, 271 U. S. 620(1926). The need for truthful testimony in a § 21 (a)bankruptcy proceeding is great, since the proceedingis "a searching inquiry into the condition of the estateof the bankrupt, to assist in discovering and collecting
the assets, and to develop facts and circumstances whichbear upon the question of discharge." Travis v. UnitedStates, 123 F. 2d 268, 271 (CA10 1941). Here, as
elsewhere, the perpetration of perjury "well may affectthe dearest concerns of the parties before a tribunal. . .
United States v. Norris, 300 U. S. 564, 574 (1937).
There is, at the outset, a serious literal problem in applying § 1621 to petitioner's answer. The words of thestatute confine the offense to the witness who "willfully . . . states . . . any material matter which he does
not believe to be true." Beyond question, petitioner's answer to the crucial question was not responsive if we assume, as we do, that the first question was directed at personal bank accounts. There is, indeed, an implication in
the answer to the second question that there was never a
personal bank account; in casual conversation this interpretation might reasonably be drawn. But we are
not dealing with casual conversation and the statute does
not make it a criminal act for a witness to willfully

OCTOBER TERM, 1972
Opinion of the Court

409 U. S.

state any material matter that implies any material matter that he does not believe to be true.
The Government urges that the perjury statute beconstrued broadly to reach petitioner's answer andthereby fulfill its historic purpose of reinforcing ouradversary factfinding process. We might go beyond theprecise words of the statute if we thought they did notadequately express the intention of Congress, but weperceive no reason why Congress would intend the drastic
sanction of a perjury prosecution to cure a testimonial
mishap that could readily have been reached with asingle additional question by counsel alert-as every examiner ought to be-to the incongruity of petitioner'sunresponsive answer. Under the pressures and tensions of interrogation, it is not uncommon for themost earnest witnesses to give answers that are notentirely responsive. Sometimes the witness does notunderstand the question, or may in an excess ofcaution or apprehension read too much or too little into
it. It should come as no surprise that a participant ina bankruptcy proceeding may have something to conceal
and consciously tries to do so, or that a debtor may beembarrassed at his plight and yield information reluctantly. It is the responsibility of the lawyer to probe;
testimonial interrogation, and cross-examination in particular, is a probing, prying, pressing form of inquiry. If
a witness evades, it is the lawyer's responsibility torecognize the evasion and to bring the witness back to
4 Petitioner's answer is not to be measured by the same standards
applicable to criminally fraudulent or extortionate statements. In
that context, the law goes "rather far in punishing intentional creation of false impressions by a selection of literally true representations, because the actor himself generally selects and arranges therepresentations." In contrast, "under our system of adversary
questioning and cross-examination the scope of disclosure is largelyin the hands of counsel and presiding officer." A. L. I. Model Penal
Code § 208.20, Comment (Tent. Draft No. 6, 1957, p. 124).

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Opinion of the Court

the mark, to flush out the whole truth with the toolsof adversary examination.
It is no answer to say that here the jury found that
petitioner intended to mislead his examiner. 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; thestate of mind of the witness is relevant only to theextent 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 unsureof the extent of their responsibility for the misunderstandings and inadequacies of examiners, and might wellfear having that responsibility tested by a jury underthe vague rubric of "intent to mislead" or "perjury by
implication." The seminal modern treatment of thehistory of the offense concludes that one consideration of policy overshadowed all others during theyears when perjury first emerged as a common-law
offense: "that the measures taken against the offense
must not be so severe as to discourage witnesses fromappearing or testifying." Study of Perjury, reprinted
in Report of New York Law Revision Commission, Legis.
Doc. No. 60, p. 249 (1935). A leading 19th century
commentator, quoted by Dean Wigmore, noted that the
English law "throws every fence round a person accusedof perjury," for"the obligation of protecting witnesses from oppression, or annoyance, by charges, or threats ofcharges, of having borne false testimony, is far paramount to that of giving even perjury its deserts.
To repress that crime, prevention is better than cure:and the law of England relies, for this purpose, on themeans provided for detecting and exposing the crimeat the moment of commission,-such as publicity,

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Opinion of the Court

409 U. S.

cross-examination, the aid of a jury, etc.; and on theinfliction of a severe, though not excessive punishment, wherever the commission of the crime has
been clearly proved." W. Best, Principles of the
Law of Evidence § 606 (C. Chamberlayne ed. 1883).
See J. Wigmore, Evidence 275-276 (3d ed. 1940). Addressing the same problem, Montesquieu took as his
starting point the French tradition of capital punishment for perjury and the relatively mild English punishment of the pillory. He thought the disparity
between the punishments could be explained because
the French did not permit the accused to present his
own witnesses, while in England "they admit of witnesses on both sides, and the affair is discussed in somemeasure between them; consequently false witness isthere less dangerous, the accused having a remedy against
the false witnesses, which he has not in France." Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, quoted in Study of
Perjury, supra, p. 253.
Thus, we must read § 1621 in light of our own and the
traditional Anglo-American judgment that a prosecution
for perjury is not the sole, or even the primary, safeguard against errant testimony. While "the lower federal courts have not dealt with the question often," andwhile their expressions do not deal with unresponsive
testimony and are not precisely in point, "it may be said
that they preponderate against the respondent's contention." United States v. Norris, 300 U. S., at 576. The
cases support petitioner's position that the perjury statuteis not to be loosely construed, nor the statute invoked
simply because a wily witness succeeds in derailing thequestioner-so long as the witness speaks the literaltruth. The burden is on the questioner to pin the witness down to the specific object of the questioner's inquiry. United States v. Wall, 371 F. 2d 398 (CA61967); United States v. Slutzky, 79 F. 2d 504 (CA3BRONSTON v. UNITED STATES

352

Opinion of the Court

1935); Galanos v. United States, 49 F. 2d 898 (CA61931); United States v. Cobert, 227 F. Supp. 915 (SDCal. 1964).
The Government does not contend that any misleading or incomplete response must be sent to the jury to
determine whether a witness committed perjury because he intended to sidetrack his questioner. As theGovernment recognizes, the effect of so unlimited an interpretation of § 1621 would be broadly unsettling. It is
said, rather, that petitioner's testimony falls within amore limited category of intentionally misleading responses with an especially strong tendency to mislead
the questioner. In the federal cases cited above, theGovernment tells us the defendants gave simple negative
answers "that were both entirely responsive and entirely
truthful . . . In neither case did the defendant-as
did petitioner here-make affirmative statements of one
fact that in context constituted denials by negative implication of a related fact." Thus the Government
isolates two factors which are said to require applicationof the perjury statute in the circumstances of this case:the unresponsiveness of petitioner's answer and the affirmative cast of that answer, with its accompanying
negative implication.
This analysis succeeds in confining the Government's
position, but it does not persuade us that Congress intended to extend the coverage of § 1621 to answers
unresponsive on their face but untrue only by "negative implication." Though perhaps a plausible argument can be made that unresponsive answers areespecially likely to mislead,5 any such argument must,, Arguably, the questioner will assume there is some logical justification for the unresponsive answer, since competent witnesses do
not usually answer in irrelevancies. Thus the questioner may conclude that the unresponsive answer is given only because it is intended
to make a statement-a negative statement-relevant to the ques-

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409 U. S.

we think, be predicated upon the questioner's being
aware of the unresponsiveness of the relevant answer.
Yet, if the questioner is aware of the unresponsivenessof the answer, with equal force it can be argued thatthe very unresponsiveness of the answer should alert
counsel to press on for the information he desires. It
does not matter that the unresponsive answer is statedin the affirmative, thereby implying the negative of thequestion actually posed; for again, by hypothesis, theexaminer's awareness of unresponsiveness should lead
him to press another question or reframe his initialquestion with greater precision. Precise questioning isimperative as a predicate for the offense of perjury.
It may well be that petitioner's answers were notguileless but were shrewdly calculated to evade. Nevertheless, we are constrained to agree with Judge Lumbard,
who dissented from the judgment of the Court of Appeals, that any special problems arising from the literally
true but unresponsive answer are to be remedied throughthe "questioner's acuity" and not by a federal perjury
prosecution.
Reversed.

tion asked. In this case, petitioner's questioner may have assumed
that petitioner denied having a personal account in Switzerland;
only this unspoken denial would provide a logical nexus between
inquiry directed to petitioner's personal account and petitioner's
adverting, in response, to the company account in Zurich.