In Bronston v. United States (409 U.S. 352 [1973]), the defendant, under oath in a bankruptcy hearing, was asked if he had a bank account in a Swiss bank, and he answered, "No." When then asked if he had ever had such an account, he responded (at 354), "The company had an account there for about six months, in Zurich." Although he did not have a personal bank account in Switzerland at the time he testified, he had previously had such an account there. While his answer--that the company had a Swiss account--was, strictly speaking, true, it was also an implicit denial that he had ever had a personal Swiss account. Acknowledging that implication, the Supreme Court nonetheless ruled that a person could not be convicted for perjury "for an answer, under oath, that is literally true but not responsive to the question asked and arguably misleading by negative implication" (490 U.S. at 353), even if the response was designed to mislead the questioner. Bronston arose in the context of the questioning of a witness in a proceeding, and the Supreme Court's holding, at least to some extent, relied on that context. The Court noted, for example, that "[i]f a witness evades, it is the lawyer's responsibility to recognize the evasion and to bring the witness back to the mark, to flush out the whole truth with the tools of adversary examination" (id. at 358-359), and found that "any special problems arising from the literally true but unresponsive answer are to be remedied through the 'questioner's acuity' and not by a federal perjury prosecution." (409 U.S. at 362.) The United States Supreme Court held that an answer that is literally true but not responsive will not support a perjury conviction. In that case, the defendant had answered in the negative to the question whether he had any bank accounts in Swiss banks. To the next question: "have you ever?" the answer was: "the company had an account there for about six months, in Zurich." The answer was literally true, but did not reveal that Bronston had himself maintained a Swiss bank account in the past. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction and held that "the burden is on the questioner to pin the witness down to the specific object of the questioner's inquiry." ( Bronston v. United States, 409 U.S. 352. The Court also emphasized that "precise questioning is imperative as predicate for the offense of perjury." (14, at 362.)