The Postponed Question

A witness testifying before a committee of the House of Representatives was asked to name the people who had been with him at a 1947 meeting of 'Communist writers'. He asked the chairman whether the question could be postponed until the rest of his testimony was completed, and the chairman agreed to defer it. The hearing ended shortly afterwards with the chairman announcing that the committee was adjourned; the direction to answer was never renewed. The witness was later prosecuted and convicted for unlawfully refusing to answer the question. The defence argued that it had never been made clear to him that he risked prosecution for contempt if he did not answer.