Court Opinion

ID: 9427971
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:28.128037+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:10.910815
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Marshall,
with whom Mr. Justice Brennan joins, dissenting.
Today the Court holds that a criminal defendant’s testimony in his own behalf may be impeached by the fact that *246he did not go to the authorities before his arrest and confess his part in the offense. The decision thus strikes a blow at two of the foundation stones of our constitutional system: the privilege against self-incrimination and the right to present a defense.
I
The Court’s decision today is extraordinarily broad. It goes far beyond a simple holding that the common-law rule permitting introduction of evidence of silence in the face of accusation or in circumstances calling for a response does not violate the privilege against self-incrimination. For in this case the prosecution was allowed to cast doubt on an accused’s testimony that he acted in self-defense by forcing him to testify that he did not go to the police of his own volition, before he had been indicted, charged, or even accused of any offense, and volunteer his version of the events.
The Court’s holding that a criminal defendant’s testimony may be impeached by his prearrest silence has three patent— and, in my view, fatal — defects. First, the mere fact of prearrest silence is so unlikely to be probative of the falsity of the defendant’s trial testimony that its use for impeachment purposes is contrary to the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Second, the drawing of an adverse inference from the failure to volunteer incriminating statements impermissibly infringes the privilege against self-incrimination. Third, the availability of the inference for impeachment purposes impermissibly burdens the decision to exercise the constitutional right to testify in one’s own defense.
A
The use of prior silence for impeachment purposes depends, as the majority recognizes, ante, at 238, on the reasonableness *247of an inference that it is inconsistent with the statements that are to be impeached. If the defendant’s prior silence does not make it more likely that his trial testimony was false, the evidence is simply irrelevant. Such an inference cannot fairly be drawn from petitioner’s failure to go to the police before any charges were brought, admit that he had committed a homicide, and offer an exculpatory explanation.
In order for petitioner to offer his explanation of self-defense, he would necessarily have had to admit that it was he who fatally stabbed the victim, thereby supplying against himself the strongest possible proof of an essential element of criminal homicide. It is hard to imagine a purer case of self-incrimination. Since we cannot assume that in the absence of official warnings individuals are ignorant of or oblivious to their constitutional rights, we must recognize that petitioner may have acted in reliance on the constitutional guarantee. In fact, petitioner had most likely been informed previously of his privilege against self-incrimination, since he had two prior felony convictions. App. 28. One who has at least twice before been given the Miranda warnings, which carry the implied promise that silence will not be penalized by use for impeachment purposes, Doyle v. Ohio, 426 U. S. 610 (1976), may well remember the rights of which he has been informed, and believe that the promise is still in force. Accordingly, the inference that petitioner’s conduct was inconsistent with his exculpatory trial testimony is precluded. See Doyle v. Ohio, supra; United States v. Hale, 422 U. S. 171, 176-177 (1975).1
*248Moreover, other possible explanations for silence spring readily to mind. It is conceivable that a person who had acted in self-defense might believe that he had committed no crime and therefore had no call to explain himself to the police. Indeed, all the witnesses agreed that after the stabbing the victim ran across the street and climbed a flight of stairs before collapsing. Initially, at least, then, petitioner might not have known that there was a homicide to explain. Moreover, petitioner testified that he feared retaliation if he went to the police. One need not be persuaded that any of these possible explanations represents the true reason for petitioner’s conduct to recognize that the availability of other plausible hypotheses vitiates the inference on which the admissibility of the evidence depends. See United States v. Hale, supra, at 176-177, 180.
The Court implies that its decision is consistent with the practice at common law; but at common law silence is admissible to contradict subsequent statements only if the circumstances would naturally have called for a response. For example, silence was traditionally considered a tacit admission *249if a statement made in the party’s presence was heard and understood by the party, who was at liberty to respond, in circumstances naturally calling for a response, and the party failed to respond.2 Silence was not considered an admission if any of the prerequisites were absent, for in such a case the failure to speak could be explained other than as assent. Similarly, failure to assert a fact could be used for impeachment if it would have been natural, under the circumstances, to assert the fact. But the authority cited by the majority in support of this proposition, ante, at 239, makes it clear that the rule cannot be invoked unless the facts affirmatively show that the witness was called on to speak, circumstances which are not present in this case.3 As we have previously observed, “[i]n most circumstances silence is so ambiguous that it is of little probative force.” United States v. Hale, supra, at 176.
Since petitioner’s failure to report and explain his actions prior to his arrest was not probative of the falsity of his testimony at trial, it was fundamentally unfair and a deprivation *250of due process to allow the jury to draw from that silence an inference that his trial testimony was false. Doyle v. Ohio, supra.
B
The use of prearrest silence for impeachment, purposes also violates the privilege against self-incrimination secured by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The privilege prohibits the government from imposing upon citizens any duty to present themselves to the authorities and report their own wrongdoing. See, e. g., Marchetti v. United States, 390 U. S. 39 (1968); Grosso v. United States, 390 U. S. 62 (1968); Haynes v. United States, 390 U. S. 85 (1968); Albertson v. SACB, 382 U. S. 70 (1965). As I have explained, in order to offer his exculpatory explanation petitioner would inevitably have had to incriminate himself as to facts that would be crucial in any subsequent prosecution. To penalize him for failing to relinquish his privilege against self-incrimination by permitting the jury to draw an adverse inference from his silence is to place an impermissible burden on his exercise of the privilege. See Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965). In practical effect, it replaces the privilege against self-incrimination with a duty to incriminate oneself. The Court attempts to avoid this conclusion by asserting that the burden does not threaten the purposes underlying the Fifth Amendment. See ante, at 236. But it is hard to see how the burden could be more substantial or direct.4
*251It is sophistry to assert that the use of prearrest silence for impeachment does not infringe the privilege against self-incrimination because the fact of the silence will not come out unless petitioner chooses to testify, see ante, at 238. An accused has the absolute right to testify in his own defense, as well as the absolute right to refuse to incriminate himself prior to trial. He may not be forced to choose between those fundamental guarantees. We may not ignore the commands of the Constitution by asserting that the defendant brought his difficulties on himself by exercising the precious right to present a defense. Nor should we piously proclaim the protection of individual liberties but extend that protection only to the prosecution’s case in chief while ensuring that the evidence can come before the jury by the back door. See Harris v. *252New York, 401 U. S. 222, 226-232 (1971) (Brennan, J., dissenting).
The Court’s reasoning is not saved by its reliance on Raffel v. United States, 271 U. S. 494 (1926). Raffel held that a defendant could be required, upon testifying at a retrial, to disclose his failure to testify at the earlier trial. In my view, Raff el was wrongly decided; our subsequent cases, without expressly overruling it, limited it so severely as to appear to rob it of any continued vitality until its resurrection today. In Grunewald v. United States, 353 U. S. 391 (1957), the Court read Raff el as holding simply that a defendant who testifies at a second trial cannot continue to take advantage of the privilege asserted at the first trial. Instead, by taking the stand the defendant “becomes subject to cross-examination impeaching his credibility just like any other witness.” 353 U. S., at 420. But Grünewald carefully pointed out that “[t]he Court, in Raff el, did not focus on the question whether the cross-examination there involved was in fact probative in impeaching the defendant’s credibility.” Ibid. The logical underpinnings of Raff el were cut away almost completely by Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965).5 Thus the majority’s statement that Raffel holds that “the Fifth Amendment is not violated when a defendant who testifies in his own defense is impeached with his prior silence,” ante, at 235, is both simplistic and overbroad.
*253Further, the Court implies most unfairly that to exclude evidence of petitioner’s prior silence would be to countenance perjury. See ante, at 237-238. The Court quotes from Harris v. New York, supra, but in that case the defendant made two contradictory statements at different times. It was logical to infer, absent an explanation to the contrary, that the defendant was lying on one occasion or the other. See also Walder v. United States, 347 U. S. 62 (1954). Here there is only one statement, and a silence which is not necessarily inconsistent with the statement. There is no basis on which to conjure up the specter of perjury.
C
Finally, impeachment by prearrest silence impermissibly burdens the constitutionally protected decision to testify in one’s own defense.
Under today’s decision a defendant who did not report his conduct to the police at the first possible moment must, in deciding whether to testify in his own defense, take into account the possibility that if he does testify the jury may be permitted to add that omission to the reasons for disbelieving his defense. This means that a person who thinks he may have done something wrong must immediately decide, most likely without the assistance of counsel, whether, if he is ever charged with an offense and brought to trial, he may wish to take the stand. For if he may later want to take the stand, he had better go to the police station right away to preserve his exculpatory explanation of the events — even though in so doing he must incriminate himself and provide evidence which may be crucial to his eventual conviction. But if he decides not to incriminate himself, he may anticipate that his right to testify in his own defense will be undermined by the argument that his story is probably untrue because he did not volunteer it to the police at the earliest opportunity. All of these strategic decisions must be made before the individual even *254knows if he will be charged and of what offense he will be accused.
To force persons to make this kind of choice between two fundamental rights places an intolerable burden on the exercise of those rights. “It cuts down on the privilege [of testifying in one’s own defense] by making its assertion costly,” Griffin v. California, supra, at 614, and is therefore forbidden.
II
I have explained why I believe the use for impeachment purposes of a defendant’s prearrest failure to volunteer his version of events to the authorities is constitutionally impermissible. I disagree not only with the Court’s holding in this case, but as well with its emerging conception of the individual’s duty to assist the State in obtaining convictions, including his own — a conception which, I believe, is fundamentally at odds with our constitutional system. See, e. g., Roberts v. United States, 445 U. S. 552, 569-572 (1980) (Marshall, J., dissenting). This conception disparages not only individual freedoms, but also the social interest in preserving those liberties and in the integrity of the criminal justice system. There is no doubt an important social interest in enabling police and prosecutors to obtain convictions. But the Court does not serve the Nation well by subordinating to that interest the safeguards that the Constitution guarantees to the criminal defendant.

 See also E. Cleary, McCormick on Evidence §161, pp..355-356 (2d ed. 1972). For this reason I would not reach a different result from that of Doyle v. Ohio simply because in Doyle the defendant had received the Miranda warnings. The furnishing of the Miranda warnings does not create the right to remain silent; that right is conferred by the Constitution. I have no doubt that if an accused were interrogated in police custody without receiving the Miranda warnings and remained silent, that silence would be inadmissible despite the lack of warnings. In that sitúa*248tion, no less than under the facts of Doyle, silence is “insolubly ambiguous.” 426 U. S., at 617. Thus, properly considered, the use in Doyle of post-arrest silence for impeachment purposes was fundamentally unfair not because it broke an implied promise by a single narcotics agent, but because it broke a promise made by the United States Constitution. Similarly, persons who are not taken into police custody may rely on their privilege not to incriminate themselves in failing to report their conduct to the police. Such silence is also "insolubly ambiguous.”
I do not regard the facts of Doyle and this case as analytically indistinguishable, however, for in Doyle the possibility that the defendant may have known his constitutional rights became a certainty when he was informed of those rights by the police. I simply believe that in both cases, the existence of the privilege against self-incrimination renders the probative value of the accused’s silence so negligible that, in view of its plainly prejudicial effect, the use of that silence for impeachment purposes violates the defendant’s federal right to due process. That is why I disagree with the Court’s statement that the lack of probativeness of the evidence was merely “a question of state evidentiary law.” Ante, at 239, n. 5.

 See, e. g., McCormick, supra n. 1, §§ 161, 270; 4 J. Wigmore, Evidence §§ 1071, 1072 (J. Chadbournrev. 1970); Gamble, The Tacit Admission Rule: Unreliable and Unconstitutional — A Doctrine Ripe for Abandonment, 14 Ga. L. Rev. 27 (1979); Brody, Admissions Implied from Silence, Evasion and Equivocation in Massachusetts Criminal Cases, 42 B. U. L. Rev. 46 (1962); Heller, Admissions by Acquiescence, 15 U. Miami L. Rev. 161 (1960); Note, Tacit Criminal Admissions, 112 U. Pa. L. Rev. 210 (1963).

 The Wigmore treatise lists three categories of cases in which silence may be used for impeachment:
“(1) Omissions in legal proceedings to assert what would naturally have been asserted under the circumstances.
“(2) Omissions to assert anything . . . when formerly narrating, on the stand or elsewhere, the matter now dealt with.
“(3) Failure to take the stand at all. . . .” 3A Wigmore, supra, § 1042, pp. 1056-1058 (footnotes omitted, emphasis in original).
Plainly, the omission to seek out an opportunity to speak is not included within these categories. Of all the cases cited by Wigmore involving silence by a criminal defendant, not one involves prearrest silence by a suspect not in the presence of law enforcement officers.

 1 confess I find Mr. Justice SteveNs’ view of the Fifth Amendment incomprehensible. Apparently, under that view, a person's right not to incriminate himself exists only if the government has already attempted to compel him to do so. See ante, at 243-244 (opinion concurring in judgment) . If no officials have tried to get the person to speak, he evidently has a duty to incriminate himself, because the reporting of crime is a civic duty and the Fifth Amendment is not applicable since the decision to speak or remain silent is, at that time, “voluntary.” See ante, at 244.
But the prohibition against compelled self-incrimination is another way of expressing the right not to incriminate oneself. See, e. g., United, States v. Burr, 25 F. Cas. 38, 39 (No. 14,692e) (CC Va. 1807) (“It is a *251settled maxim of law that no man is bound to criminate himself”). After all, the only means of compelling a person to incriminate himself is to penalize him if he does not. Of course the voluntary decision to remain silent in the absence of any official compulsion does not “raise any issue under the Fifth Amendment,” ante, at 244 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment), since there has been no self-incrimination at all. A voluntary decision to speak also does not implicate the Fifth Amendment because the self-incrimination was not compelled. But to impose a duty to report one’s own crime before an official accusation has been made would itself be to compel self-incrimination, thus bringing the Fifth Amendment into play. And, as Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965), makes plain, the Constitution also prohibits the government from burdening the right not to incriminate oneself by penalizing silence. In the present case the violation of the Fifth Amendment occurred not when the defendant remained silent, but when that silence was later used against him at his criminal trial.
Mr. Justice SteveNS relies heavily on Roberts v. United States, 445 U. S. 552 (1980). That case held that a more severe sentence could be imposed on a defendant as a result of his refusal to provide information about criminal activities of other persons. The Court rejected Roberts’ Fifth Amendment claim on grounds plainly inapplicable to this case: “At least where the Government has no substantial reason to believe that the requested disclosures are likely to be incriminating, the privilege may not be relied upon unless it is invoked in a timely fashion.” Id., at 559; but see id., at 565-566 (Marshall, J., dissenting).

 Mr. Justice Black’s concurring opinion for four Members of the Court in Grünewald, which he would have decided on constitutional grounds rather than under the Court’s supervisory powers, eloquently foreshadowed the reasoning of Griffin:
“I can think of no special circumstances that would justify use of a constitutional privilege to discredit or convict a person who asserts it. The value of constitutional privileges is largely destroyed if persons can be penalized for relying on them. It seems peculiarly incongruous and indefensible for courts which exist and act only under the Constitution to draw inferences of lack of honesty from invocation of a privilege deemed worthy of enshrinement in the Constitution.” Grunewald v. United States, 353 U. S. 391, 425-426 (1957).