## Facts

- Federal investigators linked a green Jaguar owned by Cecilia Payne to heroin transportation in Washington, D.C.
- Winfield L. Roberts accompanied Payne to the U.S. Attorney’s office and, after receiving Miranda warnings, voluntarily confessed to participating in a heroin distribution conspiracy.
- Roberts initially agreed to cooperate and identified Payne and others as co-conspirators, admitting he supplied heroin for street-level sales.
- For several years, prosecutors sought additional cooperation and testimony from Roberts against other conspirators, but he persistently refused to assist further.
- Roberts pleaded guilty to two counts of using a telephone to facilitate heroin distribution, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 843(b).
- At sentencing, the district judge treated Roberts’s refusal to cooperate as relevant to rehabilitation and the risk of future criminal conduct, and imposed consecutive four-year sentences (the statutory maximum on each count), totaling eight years.

## Issues

1. Whether a sentencing court may consider a defendant’s refusal to cooperate with government authorities investigating related criminal activity when selecting an appropriate sentence.
2. Whether increasing a sentence based on refusal to cooperate impermissibly penalizes the defendant’s Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when the privilege was not asserted.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment upholding the consecutive maximum sentences.
- The Court held that a sentencing judge may treat refusal to cooperate as a relevant sentencing consideration bearing on rehabilitation and acceptance of lawful obligations.
- The Court found no constitutional error because the record did not show that Roberts invoked the Fifth Amendment privilege at sentencing or during the period of requested cooperation.
- The Court rejected the claim that the sentence rested on “misinformation of constitutional magnitude,” concluding the sentencing judge relied on accurate information about Roberts’s sustained noncooperation.

## Legal Principles

- Sentencing courts have broad discretion to consider a wide range of information about a defendant’s character and conduct, including cooperation or refusal to cooperate with law enforcement, so long as the sentencing process does not rely on unconstitutional or materially false assumptions.
- The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination is generally not self-executing and must be affirmatively invoked; absent an assertion of the privilege, a court may draw ordinary sentencing inferences from noncooperation.
- Miranda’s warning requirement is a limited exception tied to custodial interrogation and does not extend to sentencing when the defendant has not claimed the privilege.

## Conclusion

A sentencing judge may consider a defendant’s refusal to assist an investigation of related criminal conduct as a factor relevant to rehabilitation and future risk, and doing so does not violate the Fifth Amendment when the defendant did not invoke the privilege and the sentence is not based on constitutionally significant misinformation.


Roberts v. United States, 445 U.S. 552 (1980)