You understand very little about how this works. Even if you are 100% certain in your own mind of your innocence, you still would not want to take the stand. Same way you should never talk to the police under any circumstances without a lawyer present. Juries may draw inferences from anything you say on the stand by the way a prosecution attorney may artfully frame the questions, and then require only a yes of no answer. A game you should NEVER put yourself into. Same way when being questioned by the police during and investigation. If you take the stand, even if you are 100% innocent, you are putting yourself at risk. Conversely, juries are specifically instructed that they MAY NOT draw any inferences or conclusions about a defendant who does not take the stand.
^^
RE: This, folks,
"Never" is false. There are cases where the only way to put the bare minimum evidence before the jury required for the judge to instruct the jury on your theory of defense is for the defendant to testify. For example, self-defense in a case where either there were no witnesses but D and V, or there were, but they're all for the government and don't testify to anything that supports an instruction on self-defense. Other considerations are how they present. While generally speaking it is true that even innocent defendants probably want to stay seated because even nervousness will likely end up being held against them (the jury thinking it looks like consciousness of guilt), some defendants really do present well and are very good at maintaining themselves.
I could go on. But basically, while you as a defendant should not testify in a strong majority of the cases, there are situations in which it is either advisable or necessary (unless you're just sort of praying for jury nullification, which really just refers to the fact that you can't appeal an acquittal and a jury could conspire to acquit simply because they think the defendant is "hot" or because they don't like the prosecutor's face).
Oh....right...and juries don't always follow instructions. Probably can't follow them completely fully even if they want to, thanks to human nature. You're on trial and a witness mentions that you previously did ten years for exactly the same crime. Because it falls under no exception to prohibition on prior bad act evidence, the judge excludes it at your lawyer's request and forcefully instructs the jury to strike it.
It's worse than asking you to under no circumstances imagine a pink elephant. Even if they all faithfully do not mention it in the jury room, it's still there in their heads.
The real function of cautionary instructions, ladies n' gents, is to protect the conviction on appeal. You see, appellate courts
love to ramble on about whether or not the evidence was admissible, but quickly end with "but even if there was error, it did not prejudice the defendant. The judge struck the evidence and forcefully instructed the jury to put it from their minds. He repeated that admonishment in his final instructions". (You'll also note the inherent absurdity: if a juror really
did put the evidence from their minds the first time, the repetition of the instruction in final instructions would put it right back in).
Don't testify? That's getting held against you.
I could now launch into a general diatribe about how the criminal courts system is almost entirely bullshit, except for the occasional flash of lightning, and that the appellate courts too often seem to be only about rubber-stamping convictions so we can tell ourselves the defendant had his appeal and we can stop caring about whether this all really adds up to justice.