In Swearingen v. United States (1895), the U.S Supreme Court addressed a case involving an individual named Swearingen who was convicted for perjury in a lower court. The conviction was based on his false testimony during a trial concerning land patents, where he claimed to have been residing and making improvements on certain lands at specific times, which were later proven untrue. On appeal to the Supreme Court, Swearingen argued that his statements were not material to the original case and thus could not constitute perjury. The Supreme Court disagreed with this argument. It held that any false statement made under oath in judicial proceedings can be considered as perjury if it directly affects the course of action taken by the court or influences its decision-making process - regardless of whether it pertains to primary or secondary issues within those proceedings. Therefore, even though Swearingen's lies did not concern central facts of the land patent dispute but rather collateral matters related thereto; they still had potential implications for how justice was served in that context. Consequently, his conviction for perjury was upheld by affirming that materiality is determined by whether a lie has capacity to influence a tribunal rather than its actual effect.

In the dissenting opinion for Swearingen v. United States, it was argued that the majority's decision to uphold a conviction based on evidence obtained through an allegedly illegal search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the defendant. The dissenting justices contended that by allowing such evidence to be used in court, they were effectively endorsing unlawful police conduct and undermining constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. They believed that any evidence obtained in this manner should be excluded from trial proceedings as its admission would only serve to encourage law enforcement officers to disregard citizens' constitutional rights in their pursuit of criminal convictions. Furthermore, they expressed concerns about potential abuses of power if police were allowed unchecked discretion over when and how they could search private property without a warrant or probable cause.