Cite as: 522 U. S. 398 (1998)
Ginsburg, J., concurring in judgment
The matter received initial congressional consideration some years ago. Legislation to revise and recodify the federal criminal laws, reported by the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1981 but never enacted, would have established a "defense to a prosecution for an oral false statement to a law enforcement officer" if "the statement was made 'during the course of an investigation of an offense or a possible offense and the statement consisted of a denial, unaccompanied by any other false statement, that the declarant committed or participated in the commission of such offense.' " S. Rep. No. 97-307, p. 407 (1981). In common with the "exculpatory no" doctrine as it developed in the lower courts, this 1981 proposal would have made the defense "available only when the false statement consists solely of a denial of involvement in a crime." Ibid. It would not have protected a denial "if accompanied by any other false statement (e. g., the assertion of an alibi)." Ibid.8
The 1981 Senate bill covered more than an "exculpatory no" defense; it addressed frontally, as well, unsworn oral statements of the kind likely to be made without careful deliberation or knowledge of the statutory prohibition against false statements. The bill would have criminalized false oral statements to law enforcement officers only "where the statement is either volunteered (e. g., a false alarm or an un-solicited false accusation that another person has committed an offense) or is made after a warning, designed to impress on the defendant the seriousness of the interrogation and his obligation to speak truthfully." Id., at 408.
More stringent revision, following the lead of the Model Penal Code and the 1971 proposal of a congressionally chartered law reform commission, would excise unsworn oral
8 See, e. g., United States v. Moore, 27 F. 3d 969, 979 (CA4 1994) ("exculpatory no" doctrine covers simple denials of criminal acts, but "does not extend to misleading exculpatory stories or affirmative statements . . . that divert the government in its investigation of criminal activity").
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