 Fundamentally, statements that are literally true cannot provide the basis for a perjury charge (as they do not meet the falsehood requirement) just as answers to truly ambiguous statements cannot constitute perjury.However, such fundamental truths of perjury law become muddled when discerning the materiality of a given statement and the way in which it was material to the given case.In "United States v. Brown", the court defined material statements as those with "a natural tendency to influence, or is capable of influencing, the decision of the decision-making body to be addressed," such as a jury or grand jury.