{"id":239,"date":"2018-08-09T18:54:01","date_gmt":"2018-08-09T18:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/monroecc-crj103\/?post_type=chapter&p=239"},"modified":"2018-09-05T16:04:34","modified_gmt":"2018-09-05T16:04:34","slug":"salinas-v-texas","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/monroecc-crj103\/chapter\/salinas-v-texas\/","title":{"raw":"Salinas v. Texas","rendered":"Salinas v. Texas"},"content":{"raw":"

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES<\/h2>\r\n

SALINAS v. TEXAS<\/b><\/h3>\r\n

570 U.S. ___ (2013)<\/b><\/h3>\r\nJustice Alito announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy join.\r\n\r\nWithout being placed in custody or receiving Miranda warnings, petitioner voluntarily answered the questions of a police officer who was investigating a murder. But petitioner balked when the officer asked whether a ballistics test would show that the shell casings found at the crime scene would match petitioner\u2019s shotgun. Petitioner was subsequently charged with murder, and at trial prosecutors argued that his reaction to the officer\u2019s question suggested that he was guilty. Petitioner claims that this argument violated the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that \u201c[n]o person .\u00a0.\u00a0. shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.\u201d\r\n\r\nPetitioner\u2019s Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer\u2019s question. It has long been settled that the privilege \u201cgenerally is not self-executing\u201d and that a witness who desires its protection \u201c\u00a0\u2018must claim it.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.\u00a0S. 420, 425, 427 (1984) (quoting United States v. Monia, 317 U.\u00a0S. 424, 427 (1943) ). Although \u201cno ritualistic formula is necessary in order to invoke the privilege,\u201d Quinn v. United States, 349 U.\u00a0S. 155, 164 (1955), a witness does not do so by simply standing mute. Because petitioner was required to assert the privilege in order to benefit from it, the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejecting petitioner\u2019s Fifth Amendment claim is affirmed.\r\n\r\nI<\/strong>\r\n\r\nOn the morning of December 18, 1992, two brothers were shot and killed in their Houston home. There were no witnesses to the murders, but a neighbor who heard gunshots saw someone run out of the house and speed away in a dark-colored car. Police recovered six shotgun shell casings at the scene. The investigation led police to petitioner, who had been a guest at a party the victims hosted the night before they were killed. Police visited petitioner at his home, where they saw a dark blue car in the driveway. He agreed to hand over his shotgun for ballistics testing and to accompany police to the station for questioning.\r\n\r\nPetitioner\u2019s interview with the police lasted approximately one hour. All agree that the interview was noncustodial, and the parties litigated this case on the assumption that he was not read Miranda warnings. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.\u00a0S. 436 (1966). For most of the interview, petitioner answered the officer\u2019s questions. But when asked whether his shotgun \u201cwould match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder,\u201d petitioner declined to answer. Instead, petitioner \u201c[l]ooked down at the floor, shuffled his feet, bit his bottom lip, cl[e]nched his hands in his lap, [and] began to tighten up.\u201d Id., at 18. After a few moments of silence, the officer asked additional questions, which petitioner answered. Ibid.\r\n\r\nFollowing the interview, police arrested petitioner on outstanding traffic warrants. Prosecutors soon concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the murders, and he was released. A few days later, police obtained a statement from a man who said he had heard petitioner confess to the killings. On the strength of that additional evidence, prosecutors decided to charge petitioner, but by this time he had absconded. In 2007, police discovered petitioner living in the Houston area under an assumed name.\r\n\r\nPetitioner did not testify at trial. Over his objection, prosecutors used his reaction to the officer\u2019s question during the 1993 interview as evidence of his guilt. The jury found petitioner guilty, and he received a 20-year sentence. On direct appeal to the Court of Appeals of Texas, petitioner argued that prosecutors\u2019 use of his silence as part of their case in chief violated the Fifth Amendment. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument, reasoning that petitioner\u2019s prearrest, pre-Miranda silence was not \u201ccompelled\u201d within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. 368 S.\u00a0W.\u00a03d 550, 557\u2013559 (2011). The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals took up this case and affirmed on the same ground. 369 S.\u00a0W. 3d 176 (2012).\r\n\r\nWe granted certiorari, 568 U.\u00a0S. ___ (2013), to resolve a division of authority in the lower courts over whether the prosecution may use a defendant\u2019s assertion of the privilege against self-incrimination during a noncustodial police interview as part of its case in chief. Compare, e.g., United States v. Rivera, 944 F.\u00a02d 1563, 1568 (CA11 1991), with United States v. Moore, 104 F.\u00a03d 377, 386 (CADC 1997). But because petitioner did not invoke the privilege during his interview, we find it unnecessary to reach that question.\r\n\r\nII<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe privilege against self-incrimination \u201cis an exception to the general principle that the Government has the right to everyone\u2019s testimony.\u201d Garner v. United States, 424 U.\u00a0S. 648 , n.\u00a011 (1976). To prevent the privilege from shielding information not properly within its scope, we have long held that a witness who \u201c\u00a0\u2018desires the protection of the privilege .\u00a0.\u00a0. must claim it\u2019\u00a0\u201d at the time he relies on it. Murphy, 465 U.\u00a0S., at 427 (quoting Monia, 317 U.\u00a0S., at 427). See also United States ex\u00a0rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U.\u00a0S. 103, 113 (1927) .\r\n\r\nThat requirement ensures that the Government is put on notice when a witness intends to rely on the privilege so that it may either argue that the testimony sought could not be self-incriminating, see Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.\u00a0S. 479, 486 (1951), or cure any potential self-incrimination through a grant of immunity, see Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.\u00a0S. 441, 448 (1972). The express invocation requirement also gives courts tasked with evaluating a Fifth Amendment claim a contemporaneous record establishing the witness\u2019 reasons for refusing to answer. See Roberts v. United States, 445 U.\u00a0S. 552 , n.\u00a07 (1980) (\u201cA witness may not employ the privilege to avoid giving testimony that he simply would prefer not to give\u201d); Hutcheson v. United States, 369 U.\u00a0S. 599 \u2013611 (1962) (declining to treat invocation of due process as proper assertion of the privilege). In these ways, insisting that witnesses expressly invoke the privilege \u201cassures that the Government obtains all the information to which it is entitled.\u201d Garner, supra, at 658, n.\u00a011.\r\n\r\nWe have previously recognized two exceptions to the requirement that witnesses invoke the privilege, but neither applies here. First, we held in Griffin v. California, 380 U.\u00a0S. 609 \u2013615 (1965), that a criminal defendant need not take the stand and assert the privilege at his own trial. That exception reflects the fact that a criminal defendant has an \u201cabsolute right not to testify.\u201d \u2026\u2026. Because petitioner had no comparable unqualified right during his interview with police, his silence falls outside the Griffin exception.\r\n\r\nSecond, we have held that a witness\u2019 failure to invoke the privilege must be excused where governmental coercion makes his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary. Thus, in Miranda, we said that a suspect who is subjected to the \u201cinherently compelling pressures\u201d of an unwarned custodial interrogation need not invoke the privilege. 384 U.\u00a0S., at 467\u2013468, and n.\u00a037. Due to the uniquely coercive nature of custodial interrogation, a suspect in custody cannot be said to have voluntarily forgone the privilege \u201cunless [he] fails to claim [it] after being suitably warned.\u201d Murphy, supra, at 429\u2026..Petitioner cannot benefit from that principle because it is undisputed that his interview with police was voluntary. As petitioner himself acknowledges, he agreed to accompany the officers to the station and \u201cwas free to leave at any time during the interview.\u201d Brief for Petitioner 2\u20133 (internal quotation marks omitted). That places petitioner\u2019s situation outside the scope of Miranda and other cases in which we have held that various forms of governmental coercion prevented defendants from voluntarily invoking the privilege. \u2026\u2026 The critical question is whether, under the \u201ccircumstances\u201d of this case, petitioner was deprived of the ability to voluntarily invoke the Fifth Amendment. He was not. We have before us no allegation that petitioner\u2019s failure to assert the privilege was involuntary, and it would have been a simple matter for him to say that he was not answering the officer\u2019s question on Fifth Amendment grounds. Because he failed to do so, the prosecution\u2019s use of his noncustodial silence did not violate the Fifth Amendment.\r\n\r\nPetitioner urges us to adopt a third exception to the invocation requirement for cases in which a witness stands mute and thereby declines to give an answer that officials suspect would be incriminating. Our cases all but foreclose such an exception, which would needlessly burden the Government\u2019s interests in obtaining testimony and prosecuting criminal activity. We therefore decline petitioner\u2019s invitation to craft a new exception to the \u201cgeneral rule\u201d that a witness must assert the privilege to subsequently benefit from it.\r\n\r\nOur cases establish that a defendant normally does not invoke the privilege by remaining silent. In Roberts v. United States, 445 U.\u00a0S. 552 , for example, we rejected the Fifth Amendment claim of a defendant who remained silent throughout a police investigation and received a harsher sentence for his failure to cooperate. In so ruling, we explained that \u201cif [the defendant] believed that his failure to cooperate was privileged, he should have said so at a time when the sentencing court could have determined whether his claim was legitimate.\u201d Id., at 560. See also United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.\u00a0S. 259 \u2013264 (1927); Vajtauer, 273 U.\u00a0S., at 113. A witness does not expressly invoke the privilege by standing mute.\r\n

* * * * *<\/p>\r\nPetitioner does not dispute the vitality of either of those lines of precedent but instead argues that we should adopt an exception for cases at their intersection. Thus, petitioner would have us hold that although neither a witness\u2019 silence nor official suspicions are enough to excuse the express invocation requirement, the invocation requirement does not apply where a witness is silent in the face of official suspicions. For the same reasons that neither of those factors is sufficient by itself to relieve a witness of the obligation to expressly invoke the privilege, we conclude that they do not do so together. A contrary result would do little to protect those genuinely relying on the Fifth Amendment privilege while placing a needless new burden on society\u2019s interest in the admission of evidence that is probative of a criminal defendant\u2019s guilt.\r\n\r\nPetitioner\u2019s proposed exception would also be very difficult to reconcile with Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.\u00a0S. 370 (2010) . There, we held in the closely related context of post-Miranda silence that a defendant failed to invoke the privilege when he refused to respond to police questioning for 2 hours and 45 minutes. 560 U.\u00a0S., at ___ (slip op., at 3, 8\u201310). If the extended custodial silence in that case did not invoke the privilege, then surely the momentary silence in this case did not do so either.\r\n\r\n\u2026 regardless of whether prosecutors seek to use silence or a confession that follows, the logic of Berghuis applies with equal force: A suspect who stands mute has not done enough to put police on notice that he is relying on his Fifth Amendment privilege.\r\n

* * * * *<\/p>\r\nAt oral argument, counsel for petitioner suggested that it would be unfair to require a suspect unschooled in the particulars of legal doctrine to do anything more than remain silent in order to invoke his \u201cright to remain silent.\u201d Tr. of Oral Arg. 26\u201327\u2026..But popular misconceptions notwithstanding, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be \u201ccompelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself\u201d; it does not establish an unqualified \u201cright to remain silent.\u201d A witness\u2019 constitutional right to refuse to answer questions depends on his reasons for doing so, and courts need to know those reasons to evaluate the merits of a Fifth Amendment claim. See Hoffman, 341 U.\u00a0S., at 486\u2013487\r\n\r\nIn any event, it is settled that forfeiture of the privilege against self-incrimination need not be knowing. Murphy, 465 U.\u00a0S., at 427\u2013428; Garner, supra, at 654, n.\u00a09. Statements against interest are regularly admitted into evidence at criminal trials, see Fed. Rule of Evid. 804(b)(3), and there is no good reason to approach a defendant\u2019s silence any differently.\r\n\r\nFinally, we are not persuaded by petitioner\u2019s arguments that applying the usual express invocation requirement where a witness is silent during a noncustodial police interview will prove unworkable in practice. Petitioner and the dissent suggest that our approach will \u201cunleash complicated and persistent litigation\u201d over what a suspect must say to invoke the privilege (citations omitted) but our cases have long required that a witness assert the privilege to subsequently benefit from it. That rule has not proved difficult to apply. Nor did the potential for close cases dissuade us from adopting similar invocation requirements for suspects who wish to assert their rights and cut off police questioning during custodial interviews. (citations omitted).\r\n\r\nNotably, petitioner\u2019s approach would produce its own line-drawing problems, as this case vividly illustrates. When the interviewing officer asked petitioner if his shotgun would match the shell casings found at the crime scene, petitioner did not merely remain silent; he made movements that suggested surprise and anxiety. At precisely what point such reactions transform \u201csilence\u201d into expressive conduct would be a difficult and recurring question that our decision allows us to avoid.\r\n\r\nWe also reject petitioner\u2019s argument that an express invocation requirement will encourage police officers to \u201c\u00a0\u2018unfairly \u201ctric[k]\u201d\u00a0\u2019\u00a0\u201d suspects into cooperating. Reply Brief 21. Petitioner worries that officers could unduly pressure suspects into talking by telling them that their silence could be used in a future prosecution. But as petitioner himself concedes, police officers \u201chave done nothing wrong\u201d when they \u201caccurately stat[e] the law.\u201d Brief for Petitioner 32. We found no constitutional infirmity in government officials telling the defendant in Murphy that he was required to speak truthfully to his parole officer, 465 U.\u00a0S., at 436\u2013438, and we see no greater danger in the interview tactics petitioner identifies. So long as police do not deprive a witness of the ability to voluntarily invoke the privilege, there is no Fifth Amendment violation.\r\n\r\n*\u2003\u2003*\u2003\u2003*\r\n\r\nBefore petitioner could rely on the privilege against self-incrimination, he was required to invoke it. Because he failed to do so, the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed.\r\n\r\nIt is so ordered.\r\n\r\n(footnotes and dissenting opinion omitted; syllabus edited)","rendered":"

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES<\/h2>\n

SALINAS v. TEXAS<\/b><\/h3>\n

570 U.S. ___ (2013)<\/b><\/h3>\n

Justice Alito announced the judgment of the Court and delivered an opinion in which The Chief Justice and Justice Kennedy join.<\/p>\n

Without being placed in custody or receiving Miranda warnings, petitioner voluntarily answered the questions of a police officer who was investigating a murder. But petitioner balked when the officer asked whether a ballistics test would show that the shell casings found at the crime scene would match petitioner\u2019s shotgun. Petitioner was subsequently charged with murder, and at trial prosecutors argued that his reaction to the officer\u2019s question suggested that he was guilty. Petitioner claims that this argument violated the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees that \u201c[n]o person .\u00a0.\u00a0. shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Petitioner\u2019s Fifth Amendment claim fails because he did not expressly invoke the privilege against self-incrimination in response to the officer\u2019s question. It has long been settled that the privilege \u201cgenerally is not self-executing\u201d and that a witness who desires its protection \u201c\u00a0\u2018must claim it.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Minnesota v. Murphy, 465 U.\u00a0S. 420, 425, 427 (1984) (quoting United States v. Monia, 317 U.\u00a0S. 424, 427 (1943) ). Although \u201cno ritualistic formula is necessary in order to invoke the privilege,\u201d Quinn v. United States, 349 U.\u00a0S. 155, 164 (1955), a witness does not do so by simply standing mute. Because petitioner was required to assert the privilege in order to benefit from it, the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejecting petitioner\u2019s Fifth Amendment claim is affirmed.<\/p>\n

I<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the morning of December 18, 1992, two brothers were shot and killed in their Houston home. There were no witnesses to the murders, but a neighbor who heard gunshots saw someone run out of the house and speed away in a dark-colored car. Police recovered six shotgun shell casings at the scene. The investigation led police to petitioner, who had been a guest at a party the victims hosted the night before they were killed. Police visited petitioner at his home, where they saw a dark blue car in the driveway. He agreed to hand over his shotgun for ballistics testing and to accompany police to the station for questioning.<\/p>\n

Petitioner\u2019s interview with the police lasted approximately one hour. All agree that the interview was noncustodial, and the parties litigated this case on the assumption that he was not read Miranda warnings. See Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.\u00a0S. 436 (1966). For most of the interview, petitioner answered the officer\u2019s questions. But when asked whether his shotgun \u201cwould match the shells recovered at the scene of the murder,\u201d petitioner declined to answer. Instead, petitioner \u201c[l]ooked down at the floor, shuffled his feet, bit his bottom lip, cl[e]nched his hands in his lap, [and] began to tighten up.\u201d Id., at 18. After a few moments of silence, the officer asked additional questions, which petitioner answered. Ibid.<\/p>\n

Following the interview, police arrested petitioner on outstanding traffic warrants. Prosecutors soon concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge him with the murders, and he was released. A few days later, police obtained a statement from a man who said he had heard petitioner confess to the killings. On the strength of that additional evidence, prosecutors decided to charge petitioner, but by this time he had absconded. In 2007, police discovered petitioner living in the Houston area under an assumed name.<\/p>\n

Petitioner did not testify at trial. Over his objection, prosecutors used his reaction to the officer\u2019s question during the 1993 interview as evidence of his guilt. The jury found petitioner guilty, and he received a 20-year sentence. On direct appeal to the Court of Appeals of Texas, petitioner argued that prosecutors\u2019 use of his silence as part of their case in chief violated the Fifth Amendment. The Court of Appeals rejected that argument, reasoning that petitioner\u2019s prearrest, pre-Miranda silence was not \u201ccompelled\u201d within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. 368 S.\u00a0W.\u00a03d 550, 557\u2013559 (2011). The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals took up this case and affirmed on the same ground. 369 S.\u00a0W. 3d 176 (2012).<\/p>\n

We granted certiorari, 568 U.\u00a0S. ___ (2013), to resolve a division of authority in the lower courts over whether the prosecution may use a defendant\u2019s assertion of the privilege against self-incrimination during a noncustodial police interview as part of its case in chief. Compare, e.g., United States v. Rivera, 944 F.\u00a02d 1563, 1568 (CA11 1991), with United States v. Moore, 104 F.\u00a03d 377, 386 (CADC 1997). But because petitioner did not invoke the privilege during his interview, we find it unnecessary to reach that question.<\/p>\n

II<\/strong><\/p>\n

The privilege against self-incrimination \u201cis an exception to the general principle that the Government has the right to everyone\u2019s testimony.\u201d Garner v. United States, 424 U.\u00a0S. 648 , n.\u00a011 (1976). To prevent the privilege from shielding information not properly within its scope, we have long held that a witness who \u201c\u00a0\u2018desires the protection of the privilege .\u00a0.\u00a0. must claim it\u2019\u00a0\u201d at the time he relies on it. Murphy, 465 U.\u00a0S., at 427 (quoting Monia, 317 U.\u00a0S., at 427). See also United States ex\u00a0rel. Vajtauer v. Commissioner of Immigration, 273 U.\u00a0S. 103, 113 (1927) .<\/p>\n

That requirement ensures that the Government is put on notice when a witness intends to rely on the privilege so that it may either argue that the testimony sought could not be self-incriminating, see Hoffman v. United States, 341 U.\u00a0S. 479, 486 (1951), or cure any potential self-incrimination through a grant of immunity, see Kastigar v. United States, 406 U.\u00a0S. 441, 448 (1972). The express invocation requirement also gives courts tasked with evaluating a Fifth Amendment claim a contemporaneous record establishing the witness\u2019 reasons for refusing to answer. See Roberts v. United States, 445 U.\u00a0S. 552 , n.\u00a07 (1980) (\u201cA witness may not employ the privilege to avoid giving testimony that he simply would prefer not to give\u201d); Hutcheson v. United States, 369 U.\u00a0S. 599 \u2013611 (1962) (declining to treat invocation of due process as proper assertion of the privilege). In these ways, insisting that witnesses expressly invoke the privilege \u201cassures that the Government obtains all the information to which it is entitled.\u201d Garner, supra, at 658, n.\u00a011.<\/p>\n

We have previously recognized two exceptions to the requirement that witnesses invoke the privilege, but neither applies here. First, we held in Griffin v. California, 380 U.\u00a0S. 609 \u2013615 (1965), that a criminal defendant need not take the stand and assert the privilege at his own trial. That exception reflects the fact that a criminal defendant has an \u201cabsolute right not to testify.\u201d \u2026\u2026. Because petitioner had no comparable unqualified right during his interview with police, his silence falls outside the Griffin exception.<\/p>\n

Second, we have held that a witness\u2019 failure to invoke the privilege must be excused where governmental coercion makes his forfeiture of the privilege involuntary. Thus, in Miranda, we said that a suspect who is subjected to the \u201cinherently compelling pressures\u201d of an unwarned custodial interrogation need not invoke the privilege. 384 U.\u00a0S., at 467\u2013468, and n.\u00a037. Due to the uniquely coercive nature of custodial interrogation, a suspect in custody cannot be said to have voluntarily forgone the privilege \u201cunless [he] fails to claim [it] after being suitably warned.\u201d Murphy, supra, at 429\u2026..Petitioner cannot benefit from that principle because it is undisputed that his interview with police was voluntary. As petitioner himself acknowledges, he agreed to accompany the officers to the station and \u201cwas free to leave at any time during the interview.\u201d Brief for Petitioner 2\u20133 (internal quotation marks omitted). That places petitioner\u2019s situation outside the scope of Miranda and other cases in which we have held that various forms of governmental coercion prevented defendants from voluntarily invoking the privilege. \u2026\u2026 The critical question is whether, under the \u201ccircumstances\u201d of this case, petitioner was deprived of the ability to voluntarily invoke the Fifth Amendment. He was not. We have before us no allegation that petitioner\u2019s failure to assert the privilege was involuntary, and it would have been a simple matter for him to say that he was not answering the officer\u2019s question on Fifth Amendment grounds. Because he failed to do so, the prosecution\u2019s use of his noncustodial silence did not violate the Fifth Amendment.<\/p>\n

Petitioner urges us to adopt a third exception to the invocation requirement for cases in which a witness stands mute and thereby declines to give an answer that officials suspect would be incriminating. Our cases all but foreclose such an exception, which would needlessly burden the Government\u2019s interests in obtaining testimony and prosecuting criminal activity. We therefore decline petitioner\u2019s invitation to craft a new exception to the \u201cgeneral rule\u201d that a witness must assert the privilege to subsequently benefit from it.<\/p>\n

Our cases establish that a defendant normally does not invoke the privilege by remaining silent. In Roberts v. United States, 445 U.\u00a0S. 552 , for example, we rejected the Fifth Amendment claim of a defendant who remained silent throughout a police investigation and received a harsher sentence for his failure to cooperate. In so ruling, we explained that \u201cif [the defendant] believed that his failure to cooperate was privileged, he should have said so at a time when the sentencing court could have determined whether his claim was legitimate.\u201d Id., at 560. See also United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.\u00a0S. 259 \u2013264 (1927); Vajtauer, 273 U.\u00a0S., at 113. A witness does not expressly invoke the privilege by standing mute.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

Petitioner does not dispute the vitality of either of those lines of precedent but instead argues that we should adopt an exception for cases at their intersection. Thus, petitioner would have us hold that although neither a witness\u2019 silence nor official suspicions are enough to excuse the express invocation requirement, the invocation requirement does not apply where a witness is silent in the face of official suspicions. For the same reasons that neither of those factors is sufficient by itself to relieve a witness of the obligation to expressly invoke the privilege, we conclude that they do not do so together. A contrary result would do little to protect those genuinely relying on the Fifth Amendment privilege while placing a needless new burden on society\u2019s interest in the admission of evidence that is probative of a criminal defendant\u2019s guilt.<\/p>\n

Petitioner\u2019s proposed exception would also be very difficult to reconcile with Berghuis v. Thompkins, 560 U.\u00a0S. 370 (2010) . There, we held in the closely related context of post-Miranda silence that a defendant failed to invoke the privilege when he refused to respond to police questioning for 2 hours and 45 minutes. 560 U.\u00a0S., at ___ (slip op., at 3, 8\u201310). If the extended custodial silence in that case did not invoke the privilege, then surely the momentary silence in this case did not do so either.<\/p>\n

\u2026 regardless of whether prosecutors seek to use silence or a confession that follows, the logic of Berghuis applies with equal force: A suspect who stands mute has not done enough to put police on notice that he is relying on his Fifth Amendment privilege.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n

At oral argument, counsel for petitioner suggested that it would be unfair to require a suspect unschooled in the particulars of legal doctrine to do anything more than remain silent in order to invoke his \u201cright to remain silent.\u201d Tr. of Oral Arg. 26\u201327\u2026..But popular misconceptions notwithstanding, the Fifth Amendment guarantees that no one may be \u201ccompelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself\u201d; it does not establish an unqualified \u201cright to remain silent.\u201d A witness\u2019 constitutional right to refuse to answer questions depends on his reasons for doing so, and courts need to know those reasons to evaluate the merits of a Fifth Amendment claim. See Hoffman, 341 U.\u00a0S., at 486\u2013487<\/p>\n

In any event, it is settled that forfeiture of the privilege against self-incrimination need not be knowing. Murphy, 465 U.\u00a0S., at 427\u2013428; Garner, supra, at 654, n.\u00a09. Statements against interest are regularly admitted into evidence at criminal trials, see Fed. Rule of Evid. 804(b)(3), and there is no good reason to approach a defendant\u2019s silence any differently.<\/p>\n

Finally, we are not persuaded by petitioner\u2019s arguments that applying the usual express invocation requirement where a witness is silent during a noncustodial police interview will prove unworkable in practice. Petitioner and the dissent suggest that our approach will \u201cunleash complicated and persistent litigation\u201d over what a suspect must say to invoke the privilege (citations omitted) but our cases have long required that a witness assert the privilege to subsequently benefit from it. That rule has not proved difficult to apply. Nor did the potential for close cases dissuade us from adopting similar invocation requirements for suspects who wish to assert their rights and cut off police questioning during custodial interviews. (citations omitted).<\/p>\n

Notably, petitioner\u2019s approach would produce its own line-drawing problems, as this case vividly illustrates. When the interviewing officer asked petitioner if his shotgun would match the shell casings found at the crime scene, petitioner did not merely remain silent; he made movements that suggested surprise and anxiety. At precisely what point such reactions transform \u201csilence\u201d into expressive conduct would be a difficult and recurring question that our decision allows us to avoid.<\/p>\n

We also reject petitioner\u2019s argument that an express invocation requirement will encourage police officers to \u201c\u00a0\u2018unfairly \u201ctric[k]\u201d\u00a0\u2019\u00a0\u201d suspects into cooperating. Reply Brief 21. Petitioner worries that officers could unduly pressure suspects into talking by telling them that their silence could be used in a future prosecution. But as petitioner himself concedes, police officers \u201chave done nothing wrong\u201d when they \u201caccurately stat[e] the law.\u201d Brief for Petitioner 32. We found no constitutional infirmity in government officials telling the defendant in Murphy that he was required to speak truthfully to his parole officer, 465 U.\u00a0S., at 436\u2013438, and we see no greater danger in the interview tactics petitioner identifies. So long as police do not deprive a witness of the ability to voluntarily invoke the privilege, there is no Fifth Amendment violation.<\/p>\n

*\u2003\u2003*\u2003\u2003*<\/p>\n

Before petitioner could rely on the privilege against self-incrimination, he was required to invoke it. Because he failed to do so, the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is affirmed.<\/p>\n

It is so ordered.<\/p>\n

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