Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 143

529US1

Unit: $U34

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PORTUONDO v. AGARD

Opinion of the Court

the relative credibility of a defendant who testiﬁes last, to
have in mind and weigh in the balance the fact that he heard
the testimony of all those who preceded him.
It is one thing
(as Grifﬁn requires) for the jury to evaluate all the other
evidence in the case without giving any effect to the defend-
ant’s refusal to testify; it is something else (and quite impos-
sible) for the jury to evaluate the credibility of the defend-
ant’s testimony while blotting out from its mind the fact that
before giving the testimony the defendant had been sitting
there listening to the other witnesses. Thus, the principle
respondent asks us to adopt here differs from what we
adopted in Grifﬁn in one or the other of the following re-
spects: It either prohibits inviting the jury to do what the
jury is perfectly entitled to do; or it requires the jury to do
what is practically impossible.1

1 The dissent seeks to place us in the position of defending the proposi-
tion that inferences that the jury is free to make are inferences that the
prosecutor must be free to invite. Post, at 86–87. Of course we say no
such thing. We simply say (in the sentence to which this note is ap-
pended) that forbidding invitation of a permissible inference is one of two
alternative respects in which this case is substantially different from re-
spondent’s sole source of support, Grifﬁn. Similarly, the dissent seeks to
place us in the position of defending the proposition that it is more natural
to infer tailoring from presence than to infer guilt from silence. Post, at
84–86. The quite different point we do make is that inferring opportu-
nity to tailor from presence is inevitable, and prohibiting that inference
(while simultaneously asking the jury to evaluate the veracity of the de-
fendant’s testimony) is demanding the impossible—producing the other
alternative respect in which this case differs from Grifﬁn.

The dissent seeks to rebut this point by asserting that in the present
case the prosecutorial comments went beyond pointing out the opportu-
nity to tailor and actually made an accusation of tailoring.
It would be
worth inquiring into that subtle distinction if the dissent proposed to per-
mit the former while forbidding the latter.
It does not, of course; nor, as
far as we know, does any other authority. Drawing the line between
pointing out the availability of the inference and inviting the inference
would be neither useful nor practicable. Thus, under the second alterna-
tive described above, the jury must be prohibited from taking into account
the opportunity of tailoring.