Cite as: 515 U. S. 506 (1995)
Opinion of the Court
power to resolve mixed-law-and-fact questions in civil cases is not at issue here; civil and criminal juries' required roles are obviously not identical, or else there could be no directed verdicts for civil plaintiffs. The other early case relied upon by the Government, Steinman v. McWilliams, 6 Pa. 170, 177-178 (1847), another slander case, is inapt for the same reason. The earliest American case involving the point that we have been able to find places the Government itself in opposition to its position here. In United States v. Cowing, 25 F. Cas. 680, 681 (No. 14,880) (CC DC 1835), the United States argued that materiality in a perjury prosecution was a matter for the jury's consideration, citing an unpublished decision of the General Court of Virginia. The federal court, however, did not address the issue.
State and federal cases appear not to have addressed the question until the latter part of the 19th century, at which time they do not display anything like the "virtual unanimity" claimed by the Government. Brief for United States 18. Some of the opinions cited by the Government, asserting that materiality was a question of "law" for the judge, appear to have involved either demurrers to the indictment or appeals from convictions in which the case for materiality was so weak that no reasonable juror could credit it—so that even on our view of the matter the case should not have gone to the jury. (The prosecution's failure to provide minimal evidence of materiality, like its failure to provide minimal evidence of any other element, of course raises a question of "law" that warrants dismissal.) See, e. g., United States v. Shinn, 14 F. 447, 452 (CC Ore. 1882); United States v. Singleton, 54 F. 488, 489 (SD Ala. 1892); United States v. Bedgood, 49 F. 54, 60 (SD Ala. 1891); Nelson v. State, 32 Ark. Rep. 192, 195 (1877). And some of the other cited cases involve the convicted defendant's claim that materiality should not have been decided by the jury, so that even if the issue was not one of the prosecution's failure to make a threshold case, it did not arise in a context in which the defendant's right to
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