Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 157

529US1

Unit: $U34

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

82

PORTUONDO v. AGARD

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

It did not.

to testify. Reagan concerned the former right, Wilson the
latter right, and Grifﬁn the constitutional analogue to the lat-
ter right.
If the Court in Grifﬁn had regarded the statute as
settling the meaning of the Fifth Amendment—an odd posi-
tion to imagine the Court taking—then it could have rested
It said that Wilson would govern
on Wilson.
were the question presented a statutory one, but that the
question before it was constitutional: “The question remains
whether, statute or not, the comment . . . violates the Fifth
Amendment.”
380 U. S., at 613 (emphasis added). Thus, the
question in Grifﬁn was not controlled by Wilson precisely
because the statute construed in Wilson and Reagan was
just that—a statute—and not a provision of the Constitution.
Accordingly, Grifﬁn provides no support for the Court’s
unorthodox contention that Reagan’s statutory holding was
actually of constitutional dimension.3

II

The Court offers two arguments in support of its conclu-
sion that a prosecutor may make the generic tailoring accu-
sations at issue in this case. First, it suggests that such
comment has historically not been seen as problematic.

3 I do not question the constitutionality of an instruction in which a
trial court generally advises the jury that in evaluating the credibility of
witnesses, it may take account of the interest of any witness, including
the defendant, in the outcome of a case. The interested-witness instruc-
tion given in Agard’s case was of this variety. The trial court ﬁrst told
the jury that it should consider the interest that any interested witness
might have in the outcome. See Tr. 834 (“If you ﬁnd that any witness
is an interested witness, you should consider such interest in determin-
ing the credibility of that person’s testimony and the weight to be given
to it.”).
It then went on to note, as the Court reports, ante, at 73, that
the defendant is an interested witness. See Tr. 834. Any instruction
generally applicable to witnesses will affect defendants who testify, just
as the rules governing the admissibility of testimony at trial will restrict
defendants’ testimony as they do the testimony of other witnesses.
It is
a far different matter for an instruction or an argument to impose unique
burdens on defendants.