Editing Perjury (section)

====Precedents====
The development of perjury law in the United States centers on ''United States v. Dunnigan'', a seminal case that set out the parameters of perjury within United States law. The court uses the Dunnigan-based legal standard to determine if an accused person: "testifying under oath or affirmation violates this section if she gives false testimony concerning a material matter with the willful intent to provide false testimony, rather than as a result of confusion, mistake, or faulty memory."<ref>{{cite book|title=United States v. Dunnigan 507 U.S. 87 (1993)}}</ref> However, a defendant shown to be [[Willful ignorance|willfully ignorant]] may in fact be eligible for perjury prosecution.<ref>{{cite book|title=United States v. Fawley (1998)}}</ref>

''Dunnigan'' distinction manifests its importance with regard to the relation between two component parts of perjury's definition: in willfully giving a false statement, a person must understand that she is giving a false statement to be considered a perjurer under the ''Dunnigan'' framework. Deliberation on the part of the defendant is required for a statement to constitute perjury.<ref name="cLARK 1894">{{cite book|last=cLARK|first=William|title=Hand-Book of Criminal Law|url=https://archive.org/details/handbookcrimina00clargoog|year=1894|publisher=West Publishing Co.}}</ref> Jurisprudential developments in the American law of perjury have revolved around the facilitation of "perjury prosecutions and thereby enhance the reliability of testimony before federal courts and grand juries".<ref>{{cite book|title=Dunn v. United States 480 U.S. 294 (1987)}}</ref>

With that goal in mind, Congress has sometimes expanded the grounds on which an individual may be prosecuted for perjury, with section 1623 of the United States Code recognizing the utterance of two mutually incompatible statements as grounds for perjury indictment even if neither can unequivocally be proven false.<ref>{{cite book|title=United States Code, Title 18, Part 1, Section 1623 (c)}}</ref> However, the two statements must be so mutually incompatible that at least one must necessarily be false; it is irrelevant whether the false statement can be specifically identified from among the two.<ref>{{cite book|title=United States v. McAfee 971 F.2d 755 (1992)}}</ref> It thus falls on the government to show that a defendant (a) knowingly made a (b) false (c) material statement (d) under oath (e) in a legal proceeding.<ref>{{cite book|title=United States v. Gorman}}</ref> The proceedings can be ancillary to normal court proceedings, and thus, even such menial interactions as bail hearings can qualify as protected proceedings under this statute.<ref>{{cite book|title=United States v. Greene 355 U.S. 184 (1957)}}</ref>

Wilfulness is an element of the offense. The mere existence of two mutually-exclusive factual statements is not sufficient to prove perjury; the prosecutor nonetheless has the duty to plead and prove that the statement was willfully made. Mere contradiction will not sustain the charge; there must be strong corroborative evidence of the contradiction.<ref>''People v Cash'', 388 Michigan Reports 153 (1972). See ''People v McIntire'', 232 Mich App 71 (1998), ''rev’d on other grounds'' 461 Mich 147 (1999).</ref>

One significant legal distinction lies in the specific realm of knowledge necessarily possessed by a defendant for her statements to be properly called perjury. Though the defendant must knowingly render a false statement in a legal proceeding or under federal jurisdiction, the defendant need not know that they are speaking under such conditions for the statement to constitute perjury.<ref>{{cite book|title=United States v. Yermian 468 U.S. 63 (1984)}}</ref> All tenets of perjury qualification persist: the "knowingly" aspect of telling the false statement simply does not apply to the defendant's knowledge about the person whose deception is intended.