Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 160.0

529US1

Unit: $U34

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

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

85

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

requests, is instructed not to draw it. Carter v. Kentucky,
450 U. S. 288, 301–303 (1981) (An uninstructed jury is likely
to draw adverse inferences from a defendant’s failure to tes-
tify, so defendants are entitled to have trial courts instruct
juries that no such inference may be drawn.).

The inference involved in Grifﬁn is at least as “natural”
or “irresistible” as the inference the prosecutor in Agard’s
case invited the jury to draw. There are, to be sure, reasons
why an innocent defendant might not want to testify. Per-
haps he fears that his convictions for prior crimes will gener-
ate prejudice against him if placed before the jury; perhaps
he has an unappealing countenance that could produce the
same effect; perhaps he worries that cross-examination will
drag into public view prior conduct that, though not unlaw-
ful, is deeply embarrassing. For similar reasons, an inno-
cent person might choose to remain silent after arrest. But
in either the Grifﬁn scenario of silence at trial or the Doyle
scenario of silence after arrest, something beyond the simple
innocence of the defendant must be hypothesized in order to
explain the defendant’s behavior.

Not so in the present case.

If a defendant appears at trial
and gives testimony that ﬁts the rest of the evidence, sheer
innocence could explain his behavior completely. The infer-
ence from silence to guilt in Grifﬁn or from silence to un-
trustworthiness in Doyle is thus more direct than the infer-
ence from presence to tailoring.6 Unless one has prejudged

6 The Court describes the inference now at issue as one not from pres-
ence to tailoring but merely from presence to opportunity to tailor.
Ante, at 71, n. 2. The proposition that Agard simply had the opportunity
to tailor, we note, is not what the prosecutor urged upon the jury. She
encouraged the jury to draw, from the fact of Agard’s opportunity, the
inference that he had actually tailored his testimony. See App. 49 (De-
fendant was able “to sit here and listen to the testimony of all the other
witnesses before he testiﬁe[d]. . . . [He got] to sit here and think what am
I going to say and how am I going to say it? How am I going to ﬁt
it into the evidence? . . . He’s a smart man. . . . He used everything to
his advantage.”)