Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 617.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

[09-26-01 10:36:40] PAGES PGT: OPIN

542

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Opinion of the Court

clared that the number of witnesses testifying bore no
relationship to the overall credibility of the Crown’s case.30
It also appears that “[a]fter the middle of the 1600s there
never was any doubt that the common law of England in
jury trials rejected entirely” the Roman law concept of the
rule of number. Wigmore, Required Numbers of Witnesses;
A Brief History of the Numerical System in England, 15
Harv. L. Rev. 83, 93 (1901). Though the treason statute at
issue in Fenwick’s case, and related antecedent acts, have
a superﬁcial resemblance to the rule of number, those acts
in fact reﬂected a concern with prior monarchical abuses
relating to the speciﬁc crime of treason, rather than any
vestigial belief that the number of witnesses is a proxy for
probative value.
Id., at 100–101; see also 7 J. Wigmore,
Evidence § 2037, pp. 353–354 (J. Chadbourn rev. 1978).

VIII

Texas argues (following the holding of the Texas Court
of Appeals) that the present case is controlled by Hopt v.
Territory of Utah, 110 U. S. 574 (1884), and Thompson v.
In Hopt, the defendant was
Missouri, 171 U. S. 380 (1898).
convicted of murder. At trial, the prosecution introduced
the testimony of a convicted felon that tended to inculpate
the defendant. Hopt objected to the competency of the wit-
ness on the basis of a law in place at the time of the alleged
murder, which stated: “ ‘[T]he rules for determining the com-
petency of witnesses in civil actions are applicable also to
criminal actions . . . .’ ” The relevant civil rules, in turn,
speciﬁed that “ ‘all persons, without exception, . . . may be
witnesses in any action or proceeding,’ ” but “ ‘persons
against whom judgment has been rendered upon a conviction

[where you doubt, do nothing], I shall not be for it . . .”). See also Cofﬁn
v. United States, 156 U. S. 432, 456 (1895).

30 “[O]ne single Witness, if credited by Twelve Jury-men, is sufﬁcient;
and an Hundred Witnesses, if not so credited, is not sufﬁcient to Convict
a Person of a Capital Crime.” Proceedings 210; see also id., at 223–226.