reasoning that “[i]t is well established that the fact that a person’s silence can be used against him — either as substantive evidence of guilt or to impeach him if he takes the stand — does not exert a form of pressure that exonerates an otherwise unlawful lie”
How later courts described this case
- reasoning that “[i]t is well established that the fact that a person’s silence can be used against him — either as substantive evidence of guilt or to impeach him if he takes the stand — does not exert a form of pressure that exonerates an otherwise unlawful lie”
- holding that simple denial of guilt came within broad language of statute prohibiting making of false statement: “We cannot imagine how it could be true that falsely denying guilt in a government investigation does not pervert a governmental function”
- holding that a federal statute imposing criminal liability for making false statements to investigators does not include an exception for a false statement consisting merely of a denial of wrongdoing
- rejecting defendant’s “cruel trilemma” argument in another context and declining to ■write into the law a “species of compassion inflation”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
Justice Souter,
concurring in part and concurring in the judgment.
I join the opinion of the Court except for its response to petitioner’s argument premised on the potential for prosecutorial abuse of 18 U. S. C. § 1001 as now written {ante, at 405-406). On that point I have joined Justice Ginsburg’s opinion espousing congressional attention to the risks inherent in the statute’s current breadth.