Griffin v. California
The Supreme Court ruled that California could not let prosecutors comment on a defendant's decision not to testify, or let judges instruct juries that such silence could be used as evidence of guilt.
The decision extended the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination, which the Court had only recently applied to the states, to bar this common practice of treating a defendant's silence as proof against him.
“It is a penalty imposed by courts for exercising a constitutional privilege. It cuts down on the privilege by making its assertion costly.”
The majority's core reasoning for why commenting on a defendant's silence violates the Fifth Amendment.
How it got here: A California jury convicted the defendant and imposed a death sentence; the California Supreme Court affirmed, and the U.S. Supreme Court granted review.
The Case in Depth
What happened
A man was tried for first-degree murder in California after being seen with a woman the night she was killed. He chose not to testify at the guilt phase of his trial. Under a provision of the California Constitution, the prosecutor argued to the jury that an innocent person would normally explain the evidence against him, and the judge instructed the jury that it could consider his silence in deciding guilt.
The question before the Court
Can a state let prosecutors and judges tell a jury that a defendant's silence at trial suggests guilt?
Why it matters
The ruling changed criminal trial practice nationwide by forbidding prosecutors and judges from pointing to a defendant's silence as evidence of guilt. Defendants in the handful of states that had allowed such comment, including California and Ohio, gained new protection, and the decision reinforced that choosing not to testify cannot be held against a defendant.
What changes now
The case reversed the defendant's conviction, meaning California could not rely on the tainted comment and instructions to sustain the verdict. The ruling applied going forward to bar prosecutors and judges nationwide from commenting on a defendant's failure to testify, requiring the handful of states that had permitted the practice to change their trial procedures.
What this does not decide
The Court reserved the separate question of whether a defendant can affirmatively require a jury instruction telling jurors to disregard his silence altogether, leaving that issue for another case.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Harlan
Justice Harlan agreed the result was required once the Fifth Amendment applied fully to the states under Malloy v. Hogan, but wrote to express strong reluctance. He argued the no-comment rule was not a fundamental part of liberty and that he would not have applied it to the states but for the incorporation doctrine, which he criticized as causing unnecessary friction with state systems.
Dissent — Justice Stewart
Justice Stewart, joined by Justice White, argued the majority stretched the concept of compulsion beyond reasonable bounds, since California's carefully limited comment rule protected defendants more than silence with no guidance at all. He contended the practice reflected legitimate state policy choices about trial procedure that the Constitution does not forbid, and would have affirmed the conviction.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court framed the question as whether the California practice of letting prosecutors comment and judges instruct on a defendant's silence amounted to compelling him to be a witness against himself, the core protection of the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination clause.
- The Court reasoned that having the prosecutor argue to the jury that silence suggests guilt, and having the judge endorse that inference in instructions, functions like formally offering the defendant's silence into evidence against him, even though no witness or exhibit is actually presented.
- Drawing an analogy to a federal statute that bars comment on a defendant's failure to testify in federal trials, the Court concluded that the same reasoning applies with even more force under the Fifth Amendment itself once that Amendment binds the states.
- The Court held that treating silence as evidence penalizes the exercise of the constitutional right not to testify, because it makes asserting that right costly by inviting the jury to treat it as an admission.
- Applying this reasoning, the Court concluded that both the prosecutor's argument and the judge's instructions in this case violated the Fifth Amendment as applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Malloy v. Hogan (378 U. S. 1)
Relies on this recent ruling that the Fifth Amendment's self-incrimination protection applies fully to state trials.
Reaffirms Wilson v. United States (149 U. S. 60)
Uses this earlier federal case barring comment on silence as a model for applying the same rule to the states.