Every defense attorney I know tells their client what I said: if you don’t testify, the jury will want to know why. If the defendant actually committed the crime and the defense attorney is trying to get him off — exactly what you’re talking about — then yes, you don’t want him to testify. The point I’m making is that if you really didn’t do it then there’s little to no risk of testifying, and huge risk of not.
Its funny you mentioned that, the other day I was talking to some lawyers, one of them was really really upset. His client (who he swears is innocent, lol) got convicted on some b.s. charge. This lawyer told me he knew was screwed when his client addmitted to having cheated on his wife, and having hit her several times in the past (this really had nothing to do with his case).
One of the other guys told him, he had "made a rookie mistake", that it happens, and thats why you need to be extra careful about putting a client on the stand. The jury might just convict you, not because your guilty of said crime, but because they pick up on you hiding something, or, just being an mean SOB. That, lawyer told me had made a similiar mistake of putting his client on the stand, where he was a bystander in a crime in a bodega. Unfortunately, this was the bronx, and his client had a record, and was a skinhead, lol. The prosecutor teed off on him, about his nazi past, and the jury almost ran to convict him (he wasn't upset about that, he told me his client called him racial slurs too, lol).
At this point, I think it really varies client to client, and what kind of background they have, and how they behave or will behave, not all are the same.
FWIW, I think this particular lawyer was a fool for really believing in his clients story, but hey.