Cite as: 523 U. S. 272 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
him. Brown v. Walker, 161 U. S. 591, 597-598 (1896); Brown v. United States, 356 U. S. 148, 154-155 (1958). A defendant who takes the stand in his own behalf may be impeached by proof of prior convictions without violation of the Fifth Amendment privilege. Spencer v. Texas, 385 U. S. 554, 561 (1967). A defendant whose motion for acquittal at the close of the government's case is denied must then elect whether to stand on his motion or to put on a defense, with the accompanying risk that in doing so he will augment the government's case against him. McGautha v. California, 402 U. S. 183, 215 (1971). In each of these situations, there are undoubted pressures—generated by the strength of the government's case against him—pushing the criminal defendant to testify. But it has never been suggested that such pressures constitute "compulsion" for Fifth Amendment purposes.
In Williams v. Florida, 399 U. S. 78 (1970), it was claimed that Florida's requirement of advance notice of alibi from a criminal defendant, in default of which he would be precluded from asserting the alibi defense, violated the privilege. We said:
"Nothing in such a rule requires the defendant to rely on an alibi or prevents him from abandoning the defense; these matters are left to his unfettered choice. That choice must be made, but the pressures that bear on his pretrial decision are of the same nature as those that would induce him to call alibi witnesses at the trial: the force of historical fact beyond both his and the State's control and the strength of the State's case built on these facts. Response to that kind of pressure by offering evidence or testimony is not compelled self-incrimination transgressing the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments." Id., at 84-85 (footnote omitted).
Here, respondent has the same choice of providing information to the Authority—at the risk of damaging his case for
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