Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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529US1

Unit: $U34

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OCTOBER TERM, 1999

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Syllabus

PORTUONDO, SUPERINTENDENT, FISHKILL COR-
RECTIONAL FACILITY v. AGARD

certiorari to the united states court of appeals for
the second circuit

No. 98–1170. Argued November 1, 1999—Decided March 6, 2000

Respondent was convicted on New York criminal charges after a trial that
required the jury to decide whether it believed the testimony of the
victim and her friend or the conﬂicting testimony of respondent. The
prosecutor challenged respondent’s credibility during summation, call-
ing the jury’s attention to the fact that respondent had the opportunity
to hear all other witnesses testify and to tailor his own testimony ac-
cordingly. The trial court rejected respondent’s objection that these
comments violated his right to be present at trial. After exhausting
his state appeals, respondent ﬁled a petition for habeas corpus in federal
court claiming, inter alia, that the prosecutor’s comments violated his
Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights to be present at trial and confront
his accusers, and his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process. The
District Court denied his petition, but the Second Circuit reversed.

Held:

1. The prosecutor’s comments did not violate respondent’s Fifth and
Sixth Amendment rights. The Court declines to extend to such com-
ments the rationale of Grifﬁn v. California, 380 U. S. 609, in which it
held that a trial court’s instruction about a defendant’s refusal to testify
unconstitutionally burdened his privilege against self-incrimination.
As a threshold matter, respondent’s claims ﬁnd no historical support.
Grifﬁn, moreover, is a poor analogue for those claims. Grifﬁn prohib-
ited the prosecution from urging the jury to do something the jury is
not permitted to do, and upon request a court must instruct the jury not
to count a defendant’s silence against him.
It is reasonable to expect a
jury to comply with such an instruction because inferring guilt from
silence is not always “natural or irresistible,” id., at 615; but it is natural
and irresistible for a jury, in evaluating the relative credibility of a de-
fendant who testiﬁes last, to have in mind and weigh in the balance the
fact that he has heard the testimony of those who preceded him.
In
contrast to the comments in Grifﬁn, which suggested that a defend-
ant’s silence is “evidence of guilt,” ibid., the prosecutor’s comments in
this case concerned respondent’s credibility as a witness. They were
therefore in accord with the Court’s longstanding rule that when a de-
fendant takes the stand, his credibility may be assailed like that of any