Cite as: 529 U. S. 61 (2000)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
ceiving Miranda warnings, but the Court today shows no readiness to say that juries may not draw that inference themselves. See ante, at 74-75. It therefore seems un-problematic to hold that a prosecutor's latitude for argument is narrower than a jury's latitude for assessment.
In its final endeavor to distinguish the two inferences, the Court maintains that the one in Griffin goes to a defendant's guilt but the one now at issue goes merely to a defendant's credibility as a witness. See ante, at 69. But it is dominantly in cases where the physical evidence is inconclusive that prosecutors will concentrate all available firepower on the credibility of a testifying defendant. Argument that goes to the defendant's credibility in such a case also goes to guilt. Indeed, the first sentence of the Court's account of the trial in this case acknowledges that the questions of guilt and credibility were coextensive. See ante, at 63 (Agard's trial "ultimately came down to a credibility determination.").
The Court emphasizes that a prosecutor may make an issue of a defendant's credibility, and it points for support to our decisions in Jenkins v. Anderson, 447 U. S. 231 (1980), and Brooks v. Tennessee, 406 U. S. 605 (1972). See ante, at 69-70. But again, the distinction between cross-examination and summation is critical. Cross-examination is the criminal trial's primary means of contesting the credibility of any witness, and a defendant who is also a witness may of course be cross-examined. Jenkins supports the proposition that cross-examination is of sufficient value as an aid to finding truth at trial that prosecutors may sometimes question defendants even about matters that may touch on their constitutional rights, and Brooks suggests that cross-examination can expose a defendant who tailors his testimony. See Jenkins, 447 U. S., at 233, 238; Brooks, 406 U. S., at 609-612. Thus the prosecutor's tactics in Jenkins and our own counsel in Brooks are entirely consistent with the moderate restriction on prosecutorial license that the Court today rejects.
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