Source: https://www.leagle.com/decision/1965989380US609_1913/GRIFFIN%20v.%20CALIFORNIA
Timestamp: 2017-04-26 19:37:18
Document Index: 558525836

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 3481', '§ 190', '§ 13', 'art:\n3', '§ 2272', '§ 13', '§ 10', '§ 41', '§ 3481', '§ 20', '§ 3481', '§ 3481', '§ 2250']

GRIFFIN v. CALIFORNIA | 380 U.S. 609 (1965) | Leagle.com
The death penalty was imposed and the California Supreme Court affirmed. 60 Cal.2d 182, 383 P.2d 432. The case is here on a writ of certiorari which we granted, 377 U.S. 989, to consider whether comment on the failure to testify violated the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment which we made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth in Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, decided after the Supreme Court of California had affirmed the present conviction.3
If this were a federal trial, reversible error would have been committed. Wilson v. United States, 149 U.S. 60, so holds. It is said, however, that the Wilson decision rested not on the Fifth Amendment, but on an Act of Congress, now 18 U. S. C. § 3481.4 That indeed is the fact, as the opinion of the Court in the Wilson case states. And see Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 50, n. 6; Bruno v. United States, 308 U.S. 287, 294. But that is the beginning, not the end, of our inquiry. The question remains whether, statute or not, the comment rule, approved by California, violates the Fifth Amendment.
If the words "Fifth Amendment" are substituted for "act" and for "statute," the spirit of the Self-Incrimination Clause is reflected. For comment on the refusal to testify is a remnant of the "inquisitorial system of criminal justice," Murphy v. Waterfront Comm'n, 378 U.S. 52, 55, which the Fifth Amendment outlaws.5 It is a penalty imposed by courts for exercising a constitutional privilege. It cuts down on the privilege by making its assertion costly. It is said, however, that the inference of guilt for failure to testify as to facts peculiarly within the accused's knowledge is in any event natural and irresistible, and that comment on the failure does not magnify that inference into a penalty for asserting a constitutional privilege. People v. Modesto, 62 Cal.2d 436, 452-453, 398 P.2d 753, 762-763. What the jury may infer, given no help from the court, is one thing. What it may infer when the court solemnizes the silence of the accused into evidence against him is quite another. That the inference of guilt is not always so natural or irresistible is brought out in the Modesto opinion itself:
We said in Malloy v. Hogan, supra, p. 11, that "the same standards must determine whether an accused's silence in either a federal or state proceeding is justified." We take that in its literal sense and hold that the Fifth Amendment, in its direct application to the Federal Government, and in its bearing on the States by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment, forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused's silence or instructions by the court that such silence is evidence of guilt.6
In conformity with this provision, the prosecutor in his argument to the jury emphasized that a person accused of crime in a public forum would ordinarily deny or explain the evidence against him if he truthfully could do so.1 Also in conformity with this California constitutional provision, the judge instructed the jury in the following terms:
The jury found the petitioner guilty as charged, and his conviction was affirmed by the Supreme Court of California.2
With both candor and accuracy, the Court concedes that the question before us is one of first impression here.3 It is a question which has not arisen before, because until last year the self-incrimination provision of the Fifth Amendment had been held to apply only to federal proceedings, and in the federal judicial system the matter has been covered by a specific Act of Congress which has been in effect ever since defendants have been permitted to testify at all in federal criminal trials.4 See Bruno v. United States, 308 U.S. 287; Wilson v. United States, 149 U.S. 60; Adamson v. California, supra.
We must determine whether the petitioner has been "compelled . . . to be a witness against himself." Compulsion is the focus of the inquiry. Certainly, if any compulsion be detected in the California procedure, it is of a dramatically different and less palpable nature than that involved in the procedures which historically gave rise to the Fifth Amendment guarantee. When a suspect was brought before the Court of High Commission or the Star Chamber, he was commanded to answer whatever was asked of him, and subjected to a far-reaching and deeply probing inquiry in an effort to ferret out some unknown and frequently unsuspected crime. He declined to answer on pain of incarceration, banishment, or mutilation. And if he spoke falsely, he was subject to further punishment. Faced with this formidable array of alternatives, his decision to speak was unquestionably coerced.5
The California rule allowing comment by counsel and instruction by the judge on the defendant's failure to take the stand is hardly an idiosyncratic aberration. The Model Code of Evidence, and the Uniform Rules of Evidence both sanction the use of such procedures.6 The practice has been endorsed by resolution of the American Bar Association and the American Law Institute,7 and has the support of the weight of scholarly opinion.8
The formulation of procedural rules to govern the administration of criminal justice in the various States is properly a matter of local concern. We are charged with no general supervisory power over such matters; our only legitimate function is to prevent violations of the Constitution's commands. California has honored the constitutional command that no person shall "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." The petitioner was not compelled to testify, and he did not do so. But whenever in a jury trial a defendant exercises this constitutional right, the members of the jury are bound to draw inferences from his silence. No constitution can prevent the operation of the human mind. Without limiting instructions, the danger exists that the inferences drawn by the jury may be unfairly broad. Some States have permitted this danger to go unchecked, by forbidding any comment at all upon the defendant's failure to take the witness stand.9 Other States have dealt with this danger in a variety of ways, as the Court's opinion indicates. Ante, note 3, at pp. 611-612. Some might differ, as a matter of policy, with the way California has chosen to deal with the problem, or even disapprove of the judge's specific instructions in this case.10 But, so long as the constitutional command is obeyed. such matters of state policy are not for this Court to decide.
FootNotes 1. See Penal Code § 190.1, providing for separate trials on the two issues.
2. Article I, § 13, of the California Constitution provides in part:
3. The California Supreme Court later held in People v. Modesto, 62 Cal.2d 436, 398 P.2d 753, that its "comment" rule squared with Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1. The overwhelming consensus of the States, however, is opposed to allowing comment on the defendant's failure to testify. The legislatures or courts of 44 States have recognized that such comment is, in light of the privilege against self-incrimination, "an unwarrantable line of argument." State v. Howard, 35 S.C. 197, 203, 14 S. E. 481, 483. See 8 Wigmore, Evidence § 2272, n. 2 (McNaughton rev. ed. 1961 and 1964 Supp.). Of the six States which permit comment, two, California and Ohio, give this permission by means of an explicit constitutional qualification of the privilege against self-incrimination. Cal. Const., Art. I § 13; Ohio Const., Art. I, § 10. New Jersey permits comment, State v. Corby, 28 N.J. 106, 145 A.2d 289; cf. State v. Garvin, 44 N.J. 268, 208 A.2d 402; but its constitution contains no provision embodying the privilege against self-incrimination (see Laba v. Newark Bd. of Educ., 23 N.J. 364, 389, 129 A.2d 273, 287; State v. White, 27 N.J. 158, 168-169, 142 A.2d 65, 70). The absence of an express constitutional privilege against self-incrimination also puts Iowa among the six. See State v. Ferguson, 226 Iowa 361, 372-373, 283 N. W. 917, 923. Connecticut permits comment by the judge but not by the prosecutor. State v. Heno, 119 Conn. 29, 174 A. 181. New Mexico permits comment by the prosecutor but holds that the accused is then entitled to an instruction that "the jury shall indulge no presumption against the accused because of his failure to testify." N. M. Stat. Ann. § 41-12-19; State v. Sandoval, 59 N.M. 85, 279 P.2d 850.
4. Section 3481 reads as follows:
The legislative history shows that 18 U. S. C. § 3481 was designed, inter alia, to bar counsel for the prosecution from commenting on the defendant's refusal to testify. Mr. Frye of Maine, spokesman for the bill, said, "That is the law of Massachusetts, and we propose to adopt it as a law of the United States." 7 Cong. Rec. 385. The reference was to Mass. Stat. 1866, c. 260, now Mass. Gen. Laws Ann., c. 233, § 20, cl. Third (1959), which is almost identical with 18 U. S. C. § 3481. See also Commonwealth v. Harlow, 110 Mass. 411; Commonwealth v. Scott, 123 Mass. 239; Opinion of the Justices, 300 Mass. 620, 15 N.E.2d 662.
5. Our decision today that the Fifth Amendment prohibits comment on the defendant's silence is no innovation, for on a previous occasion a majority of this Court indicated their acceptance of this proposition. In Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, the question was, as here, whether the Fifth Amendment proscribed California's comment practice. The four dissenters (BLACK, DOUGLAS, Murphy and Rutledge, JJ.) would have answered this question in the affirmative. A fifth member of the Court, Justice Frankfurter, stated in a separate opinion: "For historical reasons a limited immunity from the common duty to testify was written into the Federal Bill of Rights, and I am prepared to agree that, as part of that immunity, comment on the failure of an accused to take the witness stand is forbidden in federal prosecutions." Id., p. 61. But, though he agreed with the dissenters on this point, he also agreed with Justices Vinson, Reed, Jackson, and Burton that the Fourteenth Amendment did not make the Self-Incrimination Clause of the Fifth Amendment applicable to the States; thus he joined the opinion of the Court which so held (the Court's opinion assumed that the Fifth Amendment barred comment, but it expressly disclaimed any intention to decide the point. Id., p. 50).
6. We reserve decision on whether an accused can require, as in Bruno v. United States, 308 U.S. 287, that the jury be instructed that his silence must be disregarded.
1. See the excerpt from the prosecutor's argument quoted in the Court's opinion, ante, pp. 610-611.
2. 60 Cal.2d 182, 383 P.2d 432. As this case was decided before Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1, the California Supreme Court did not give plenary consideration to the question now before us; however, that court has since upheld the federal constitutionality of the California comment rule in a thoroughly reasoned opinion by Chief Justice Traynor. People v. Modesto, 62 Cal.2d 436, 398 P.2d 753.
3. In the Adamson case, the present question was not reached because the majority ruled that the Fifth Amendment is not applicable to the States. Mr. Justice Reed's opinion made clear that the California rule was only assumed to contravene the Fifth Amendment, "without any intention . . . of ruling upon the issue." The dissenting opinion of MR. JUSTICE BLACK and MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS read the majority opinion as "strongly imply[ing] that the Fifth Amendment does not, of itself, bar comment upon failure to testify," but they considered the case on the majority's assumption, thereby giving no approval to that assumption, even in dictum. That no such approval was given by this dissenting opinion is further made evident by the fact that Mr. Justice Murphy and Mr. Justice Rutledge, also in dissent, felt it necessary to make what they characterized as an "addition," an expression of their view that the guarantee against self-incrimination had been violated in the case. Mr. Justice Frankfurter, in concurring, also indicated that he was prepared to agree that the Fifth Amendment barred comment, thus bringing to three the members of the Court who, in dicta, took the view embraced by the Court today.
4. 20 Stat. 30, as amended, now 18 U. S. C. § 3481.
5. See generally 8 Wigmore, Evidence § 2250 (McNaughton rev. ed. 1961).
6. Model Code of Evidence, Rule 201 (1942); Uniform Rules of Evidence, Rule 23 (4) (1953).
7. 56 A. B. A. Rep. 137-159 (1931); 59 A. B. A. Rep. 130-141 (1934); 9 Proceedings A. L. I. 202, 203 (1931).
8. See Bruce, The Right to Comment on the Failure of the Defendant to Testify, 31 Mich. L. Rev. 226; Dunmore, Comment on Failure of Accused to Testify, 26 Yale L. J. 464; Hadley, Criminal Justice in America, 11 A. B. A. J. 674, 677; Hiscock, Criminal Law and Procedure in New York, 26 Col. L. Rev. 253, 258-262; Note, Comment on Defendant's Failure to Take the Stand, 57 Yale L. J. 145.
9. See, e. g., State v. Pearce, 56 Minn. 226, 57 N. W. 652; Tines v. Commonwealth, 25 Ky. L. Rep. 1233, 77 S. W. 363; Hanks v. Commonwealth, 248 Ky. 203, 58 S.W.2d 394.
10. It should be noted that the defendant's counsel did not request any additions to the instructions which would have brought out other possible reasons which might have influenced the defendant's decision not to become a witness. The California Constitution does not in terms prescribe what form of instruction should be given and the petitioner has not argued that another form would have been denied.