# Brogan v. United States

> Supreme Court of the United States · January 26, 1998 · 522 U.S. 398

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433569

## Case

- **Full name:** Brogan v. United States
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** January 26, 1998
- **Citations:** 522 U.S. 398; 118 S. Ct. 805; 139 L. Ed. 2d 830; 1998 U.S. LEXIS 648
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Concurrence by Souter
- **Judges:** Scalia, Scaua, Rehnquist, O'Connok, Kennedy, Thomas, Souter, Ginsburg, Stevens, Breyer
- **Cited by:** 218 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- No negative treatment found by the automated citator. That is not the same as a confirmation that the case is good law; read the citing cases.
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433569

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- 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”
- holding that a statute which criminalized “any” false statement within the jurisdiction of a federal agency does not permit an exception for the mere denial of wrongdoing

## Opinion text

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.

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Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9433569. Public record. Not legal advice.