Cite as: 526 U. S. 314 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
must accord the privilege the same protection in the sentencing phase of "any criminal case" as that which is due in the trial phase of the same case, see Griffin, supra.
The concerns which mandate the rule against negative inferences at a criminal trial apply with equal force at sentencing. Without question, the stakes are high: Here, the inference drawn by the District Court from petitioner's silence may have resulted in decades of added imprisonment. The Government often has a motive to demand a severe sentence, so the central purpose of the privilege—to protect a defendant from being the unwilling instrument of his or her own condemnation—remains of vital importance.
Our holding today is a product of existing precedent, not only Griffin but also by Estelle v. Smith, in which the Court could "discern no basis to distinguish between the guilt and penalty phases of respondent's capital murder trial so far as the protection of the Fifth Amendment privilege is concerned." 451 U. S., at 462-463. Although Estelle was a capital case, its reasoning applies with full force here, where the Government seeks to use petitioner's silence to infer commission of disputed criminal acts. See supra, at 326. To say that an adverse factual inference may be drawn from silence at a sentencing hearing held to determine the specifics of the crime is to confine Griffin by ignoring Estelle. We are unwilling to truncate our precedents in this way.
The rule against adverse inferences from a defendant's silence in criminal proceedings, including sentencing, is of proven utility. Some years ago the Court expressed concern that "[t]oo many, even those who should be better advised, view this privilege as a shelter for wrongdoers. They too readily assume that those who invoke it are either guilty of crime or commit perjury in claiming the privilege." Ull-mann v. United States, 350 U. S. 422, 426 (1956). Later, it quoted with apparent approval Wigmore's observation that " '[t]he layman's natural first suggestion would probably be that the resort to privilege in each instance is a clear confes-
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