Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 152.0

529US1

Unit: $U34

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

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

77

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

Grifﬁn v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965), we held that a
defendant’s refusal to testify at trial may not be used as evi-
dence of his guilt.
In Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610 (1976),
we held that a defendant’s silence after receiving Miranda
warnings did not warrant a prosecutor’s attack on his credi-
bility. Both decisions stem from the principle that where
the exercise of constitutional rights is “insolubly ambiguous”
as between innocence and guilt, id., at 617, a prosecutor may
not unfairly encumber those rights by urging the jury to
construe the ambiguity against the defendant.

The same principle should decide this case. Ray Agard
attended his trial, as was his constitutional right and his
statutory duty, and he testiﬁed in a manner consistent with
other evidence in the case. One evident explanation for the
coherence of his testimony cannot be ruled out: Agard may
have been telling the truth.
It is no more possible to know
whether Agard used his presence at trial to ﬁgure out how
to tell potent lies from the witness stand than it is to know
whether an accused who remains silent had no exculpatory
story to tell.

The burden today’s decision imposes on the exercise of
Sixth Amendment rights is justiﬁed, the Court maintains,
because “the central function of the trial . . . is to discover
the truth.” See ante, at 73. A trial ideally is a search for
the truth, but I do not agree that the Court’s decision ad-
vances that search. The generic accusation that today’s de-
cision permits the prosecutor to make on summation does not
serve to distinguish guilty defendants from innocent ones.
Every criminal defendant, guilty or not, has the right to at-
tend his trial. U. S. Const., Amdt. 6.
Indeed, as the Court
grants, ante, at 74, New York law requires defendants to be
It follows that every defendant who
present when tried.
testiﬁes is equally susceptible to a generic accusation about
his opportunity for tailoring. The prosecutorial comment at
issue, tied only to the defendant’s presence in the courtroom
and not to his actual testimony, tarnishes the innocent no