Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 155

529US1

Unit: $U34

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PORTUONDO v. AGARD

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

In addition to its incapacity to serve the individualized
truth-ﬁnding function of trials, a generic tailoring argument
launched on summation entails the simple unfairness of pre-
venting a defendant from answering the charge. This prob-
lem was especially pronounced in the instant case. Under
New York law, defendants generally may not bolster their
own credibility by introducing their prior consistent state-
ments but may introduce such statements to rebut claims of
recent fabrication. See People v. McDaniel, 81 N. Y. 2d 10,
16, 611 N. E. 2d 265, 268 (1993); 117 F. 3d, at 715 (Winter,
C. J., concurring). Had the prosecution made its tailoring
accusations on cross-examination, Agard might have been
able to prove that his story at trial was the same as it had
been before he heard the testimony of other witnesses. A
prosecutor who can withhold a tailoring accusation until
summation can avert such a rebuttal.

The Court’s only support for its choice to ignore the
distinction between summation and cross-examination is
Reagan v. United States, 157 U. S. 301 (1895), a decision
which, by its very terms, does not bear on today’s constitu-
It is true, as the Court says, that
tional controversy.
Reagan upheld a trial judge’s instruction that questioned the
credibility of a testifying defendant in a generic manner, and
it is also true that a defendant is no more able to respond
to an instruction than to a prosecutor’s summation. But
Reagan has no force as precedent for this case because, in
the 1895 Court’s view, the instruction there at issue did not
burden any constitutional right of the defendant.

The trial court in Reagan instructed the jury that when it
evaluated the credibility of the defendant’s testimony,
it
could consider that defendants have a powerful interest in
being acquitted, powerful enough that it might induce some
people to lie. See id., at 304–305. This instruction bur-
dened the defendant’s right to testify at his own trial. But
the Court that decided Reagan conceived of that right as one
dependent on a statute, not on any constitutional prescrip-