During his trial, Afroman was put on the stand. The prosecutor* asked him, “In the year 2000, did you release ‘And Then I Got High’?” Afroman corrected him and said, “‘Because I Got High,‘ yes.”
I know that the best course of action in court is to answer only the questions asked, and to not provide any extra information. Yes, the exact title of the song is picayune in the extreme here, I get that. But here’s my question: If Afroman had played dumb and just said, “no,” he wouldn’t have been perjuring himself. He most assuredly did not release “And Then I Got High” in 2000. So if Afroman had played dumb until the prosecutor actually realized his (the prosecutor’s) mistake, and asked about the song using the correct title, would Afroman be looking at contempt of court (or something) for wasting the court’s time?
*Could have been his own defense attorney, but for this thought experiment assume it was the prosecutor asking the questions.
Clearly not, he was answering the question asked. There is nothing improper about being factual and correct. Any wasting of time is the fault of the prosecutor, and that’s just a minor mistake that would be easily corrected.
IANAL, but I have watched a lot of courtroom videos and issues like this are fairly common.
IANAL but I’d assume he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong by being pedantic about it. But it wouldn’t have done anything to help his case. The judge/jury could have thought “this guys a pedantic asshole”. Better to highlight the fact the opposing lawyer doesn’t know what he’s doing.
The oath says “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth”.
ISTM “No.” and shutting up is not telling the whole truth. Now whether the “No.” elicits a response from the attorney that helps you tell the whole truth or not depends on them. Attorney’s ought not ask questions they don’t know the answer to. So a sensible attorney response to an unexpected “No.” answer ought to be something like: “Did you release a song of a similar name in 2000? What was that name?” And then we move along.
This was exactly my thought. Afroman gave the best answer under the circumstances. It was accurate, got to the point, and made it clear that the plaintiffs are being sloppy with their facts. And all that on a point that was completely irrelevant to the plaintiffs case, which was nonsense from the beginning.
I remember a scene from The West Wing where Oliver Babish is preparing C.J. Cregg for an upcoming hearing where she’ll be testifying. He casually asks her “Do you know what time it is?” She looks at her watch and says “It’s two thirty.”
Babish then explains to her that when you are testifying on record you never volunteer any information beyond the minimum that is necessary to answer the question. He says the correct answer to the question “Do you know what time it is?” is to look at your watch and then say “Yes.” And then let the lawyer ask the follow-up question “What time is it?”
The correct answer would be “No” if I had to look at my watch.
I once tried this argument in an exam, which had a question in the form, “Can you prove that X = Y?”. After failing to prove it, I argued my correct answer was “No”, because I couldn’t prove it.