Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 156.0

529US1

Unit: $U34

[09-26-01 08:14:00] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 61 (2000)

81

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

tion. See id., at 304 (defendant was qualiﬁed to testify
under oath pursuant to an 1878 Act of Congress, ch. 37, 20
Stat. 30, which removed the common-law disability that had
previously prevented defendants from giving sworn testi-
mony). No one in that 19th-century case suggested that the
trial court’s comment exacted a penalty for the exercise of
any constitutional right.2
It is thus inaccurate for the Court
to portray Reagan as precedent for the proposition that the
difference between summation and cross-examination “is
not a constitutionally signiﬁcant distinction.” Ante, at 72.
Reagan made no determination of constitutional signiﬁcance
or insigniﬁcance, for it addressed no constitutional question.
The Court endeavors to bring Reagan within constitu-
tional territory by yoking it to Grifﬁn. The Court asserts
that Grifﬁn relied on the very statute that deﬁned the rights
of the defendant in Reagan and that Grifﬁn’s holding makes
sense only if the statute in Reagan carries constitutional im-
plications. Ante, at 72, n. 3. This argument is ﬂawed in its
premise, because Grifﬁn rested solidly on the Fifth Amend-
ment. The Court in Grifﬁn did refer to the 1878 statute
at issue in Reagan, but it did so only in connection with its
discussion of Wilson v. United States, 149 U. S. 60 (1893), a
decision construing a different provision of that statute to
prohibit federal prosecutors from commenting to juries on
defendants’ failure to testify. See Grifﬁn, 380 U. S., at 612–
613. The statute at issue in Reagan and Wilson, now codi-
ﬁed at 18 U. S. C. § 3481, provides that defendants in crimi-
nal trials have both the right to testify and the right not

2 The offense charged in Reagan was, moreover, a misdemeanor rather
than a felony. See 157 U. S., at 304. Even today, our cases recognize a
distinction between serious and petty crimes, and we have held that some
provisions of the Sixth Amendment do not apply in petty prosecutions.
See, e. g., Lewis v. United States, 518 U. S. 322 (1996) (right to jury trial
does not attach in trials for petty offenses). The Reagan Court classiﬁed
the case before it as belonging to the less serious category of offenses and
explicitly denied the defendant the heightened procedural protections that
attached in trials for more serious crimes. See 157 U. S., at 302–304.