Tbе defendant, Donald Fry, appeals Ms conviction of larceny in a building. MCLA § 750.360 (Stat Ann 1954 Rev § 28.592). The victim of the larceny, Alden Smith, testified that he admit ted tо his apartment a person who identified himself as Donald Fry and that, after that person left the apartment, Smith’s radio was missing. Smith was acquаinted with a Donald Fry.
Smith was unable to identify the defendant because Smith was blind and his hearing was so impaired that he was unable to identify the defеndant’s voice.
*231 A pawnshop owner testified that the defendant and 2 other persons pawned with him a radio hearing the same modеl number appearing on a purchase order for Smith’s radio. A thumbprint on the pawnshop owner’s inventory card for the pawned rаdio was identified as the defendant’s thumbprint. The radio was pawned 2 days after Smith’s radio was stolen.
The defendant asserts that the evidence was insufficient to warrant a conviction because there was no evidence showing that he was the person who enterеd Smith’s apartment just before the radio was taken. However, it is well established that the trier of fact may properly infer that one in possession of recently stolen property was the thief.
People
v.
Helcher
(1968),
A witness who claimed ability to recognize Smith’s radio testified that the pawnеd radio was Smith’s radio. This testimony would support a finding that the radio the defendant pawned was the stolen radio. See
Jones
v.
State
(1962), 106 Ga App 614 (
The peoрle’s evidence, if believed by the trier of fact, established that the defendant was in possession of Smith’s radio just 2 days after it was taken from his apartment. The fact that such possession may have been shared with 2 other persons, one of whom might have been the thief, does not negate the reasonableness of the permissible inference that the defendant was the thief.
This case differs from
Gablick
v.
People
(1879),
The cases cited by the defendant where the offense charged was burglary are not in point. There is аuthority that the unexplained possession of recently stolen property, unaccompanied by other facts or circumstаnces indicating guilt, will not sustain a conviction of breaking and entering even though such possession is some evidence that the possеssor is guilty of theft. See
People
v.
McDonald
(1910),
The defendant asserts that his constitutional right not to incriminate himself 2 was violated by reference during the prosecutor’s closing jury argument to the fact that the defendant had chosen to exercise his constitutional right to remain silent. A police officer testified that when he and a fellow police officer advised the defendant that he was charged with stealing Smith’s radio they tried to tell him of his constitutional rights “and he said he knew his Constitutional rights! We didn’t have to tell him that, and he wouldn’t tell us anything else.” The prosecutor emphasized this tеstimony during oral argument. 3
*233 The defendant did not take the stand in his own behalf. The trial judge cautioned the jury that, “No presumption adverse to the defendant is to arise from the mere fact that he does not offer himself as a witness and testify in his own behalf, or that he does not respond to the police officer. That is his constitutional right.”
Courts generally have held that the constitutional privilege against self-incrimination protects an accused person from introduction at trial of evidence that he remained silent or claimed that рrivilege in the face of an accusation made after he was taken into custody. 4
“While, under certain circumstances, the statements of a person in custody may be used in evidence against him, his silence may not.”
People
v.
Gisondi
(1967),
In
People
v.
Bigge
(1939),
“There can no such thing as confession of guilt by silence in or out of court. The unanswered allegation by another of the guilt of a defendant is no confession of guilt on the part of the defendant. Defendant, if he heard the statement, was not morally or legally called upоn to make denial or suffer his failure to do so to stand as evidence of his guilt. *234 He said nothing, and what was said in his presence by another wаs inadmissible”.
Similarly, see
Templeton
v.
People
(1873),
However, in this case, in contrast to the
Bigge Case,
counsel for the defendant Pry did not voice an objection either to the police officer’s testimony or to the рrosecutor’s argument. See
Koepel
v.
St. Joseph Hospital
(1968),
The defendant should not, in our opinion, be granted a new trial because of the introduction of this testimоny or the prosecutor’s argument based thereon. In
Chapman
v.
California
(1967),
The defendant’s conviction is affirmed.
Notes
See, also,
People
v.
Tutha
(1936),
The Fifth Amendment as applied to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment and Const 1963, art 1, § 17.
The prosecutor argued: “and what is the reaction of Donald Fry. He was arrested and advised by the officer that he is being charged with stealing the blind man’s radio, and the officer started to advise him of his constitutional rights, and his response is to the *233 charge, ‘I know all of your constitutional rights, and I am not going to answer any questions about this.’ ’’
Gillison
v.
United States
(CA DC, 1968), 399 F2d 586;
State
v.
Ripa
(1965), 45 NJ 199 (
That the tacit admission argument is impermissible whether the defendant remains silent in the face of an accusation or voiees his claim of privilege, see People v. Gisondi, supra, State v. Ripa, supra, and Gillison v. United States, supra,
Other Michigan cases discussing the question are
People
v.
Courtney
(1913),
We recognize that in People v. Bigge, supra, the Court held that the improper comment on defendant’s silence was not in that case harmless. We do not understand this to mean that such error can never be harmless. See Chapman v. California, supra, n 8. On the facts of this case we have concluded, as previously stated, that the error was harmless.