Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 153.0

529US1

Unit: $U34

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

78

PORTUONDO v. AGARD

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

less than the guilty. Nor can a jury measure a defendant’s
credibility by evaluating the defendant’s response to the ac-
cusation, for the broadside is ﬁred after the defense has sub-
mitted its case. An irrebuttable observation that can be
made about any testifying defendant cannot sort those who
tailor their testimony from those who do not, much less the
guilty from the innocent.

I

The Court of Appeals took a carefully restrained and mod-
erate position in this case.
It held that a prosecutor may
not, as part of her summation, use the mere fact of a defend-
ant’s presence at his trial as the basis for impugning his cred-
ibility. A prosecutor who wishes at any stage of a trial to
accuse a defendant of tailoring speciﬁc elements of his testi-
mony to ﬁt with particular testimony given by other wit-
nesses would, under the decision of the Court of Appeals,
have leave to do so. See 159 F. 3d 98, 99 (CA2 1998). More-
over, on cross-examination, a prosecutor would be free to
challenge a defendant’s overall credibility by pointing out
that the defendant had the opportunity to tailor his testi-
mony in general, even if the prosecutor could point to no
facts suggesting that the defendant had actually engaged in
tailoring. See 117 F. 3d 696, 708, n. 6 (CA2 1997). The
Court of Appeals held only that the prosecutor may not
launch a general accusation of tailoring on summation. See
id., at 709; see also United States v. Chacko, 169 F. 3d 140,
150 (CA2 1999). Thus, the decision below would rein in a
prosecutor solely in situations where there is no particular
reason to believe that tailoring has occurred and where the
defendant has no opportunity to rebut the accusation.

The Court of Appeals’ judgment was correct in light of
Grifﬁn and Doyle. Those decisions instruct that when a de-
fendant’s exercise of a constitutional fair trial right is “insol-
ubly ambiguous” as between innocence and guilt, the prose-
cutor may not urge the jury to construe the bare invocation
of the right against the defendant. See Doyle, 426 U. S., at