## Facts

- Eddie Dean Griffin was tried in California for the murder of Essie Mae Hodson.
- Evidence indicated Griffin was seen struggling with Hodson in her apartment; Hodson reported Griffin tried to force sex.
- After Griffin was forced out, he broke back in, struck Hodson’s boyfriend, and both Griffin and Hodson disappeared.
- A witness later saw Griffin emerging from a trash box; Hodson was found inside badly beaten and later died.
- Griffin did not testify at the guilt phase (though he testified at the penalty phase).
- Over defense objection, the trial court instructed the jury it could consider Griffin’s failure to deny or explain incriminating facts as tending to show the truth of that evidence and favoring inferences unfavorable to him.
- The prosecutor argued Griffin’s silence showed he did not deny or explain key incriminating facts, contrasting his silence with the victim’s death.
- The jury convicted Griffin of first-degree murder and imposed the death penalty; the California Supreme Court affirmed under state law permitting comment and adverse inferences from silence.

## Issues

1. Whether the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, prohibits prosecutorial comment on a defendant’s failure to testify.
2. Whether the Fifth Amendment prohibits a jury instruction permitting adverse inferences of guilt from a defendant’s silence.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment affirming Griffin’s conviction.
- The Court held that both the prosecutor’s comments on Griffin’s silence and the jury instruction authorizing adverse inferences violated the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination as applied to the states.
- The Court reasoned that allowing comment or adverse inferences imposes a penalty on exercising the privilege by pressuring the defendant to testify to avoid juror suspicion.

## Legal Principles

- In a state criminal trial, the Fifth Amendment forbids the prosecutor from asking the jury to treat the defendant’s failure to testify as evidence of guilt.
- A court may not instruct the jury that it may draw adverse inferences from a defendant’s silence about incriminating facts.
- Government action that makes the exercise of the privilege against self-incrimination costly functions as an unconstitutional penalty, even without direct compulsion to testify.
- State constitutional or statutory provisions authorizing comment on silence cannot narrow the federal constitutional privilege as incorporated against the states.

## Conclusion

Griffin held that a defendant’s choice not to testify may not be used against him through prosecutorial argument or jury instructions inviting adverse inferences, because such use penalizes the Fifth Amendment privilege and is unconstitutional in state prosecutions.


Griffin v. California, 380 U.S. 609 (1965)