Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 625.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

550

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Opinion of the Court

type laws and Article 38.07 may seem to operate on their
face, in practical application (at least in certain instances)
their consequences are no different, and, accordingly, they
ought to be treated alike. For example, if there were a
rule declaring a victim to be incompetent to testify unless
she was under a certain age at the time of the offense, or
had made an outcry within a speciﬁed period of time, or had
other corroborating evidence, and the prosecution attempted
to rest its case on the victim’s testimony alone without sat-
isfying those requirements, the end result would be a judg-
ment of acquittal. Post, at 564–565. Likewise, under Arti-
cle 38.07, if the prosecution attempts to rest its case on the
victim’s testimony alone without satisfying the Article’s re-
quirements, the result would also be an acquittal. Thus,
Hopt-type laws and Article 38.07 should be treated the same
way for ex post facto purposes.

This argument seeks to make Hopt controlling by ignoring
what the case says. Hopt speciﬁcally distinguished laws
that “alter the degree, or lessen the amount or measure,
of the proof ” required to convict from those laws that
merely respect what kind of evidence may be introduced
at trial. See supra, at 545. The above argument, though,
simply denies any meaningful distinction between those
types of laws, on the premise that they produce the same
results in some situations. See post, at 563 (“Such a victim
is of course not literally forbidden from testifying, but that
cannot make the difference for Ex Post Facto Clause pur-
poses between a sufﬁciency of the evidence rule and a wit-
ness competency rule”); post, at 571 (“Hopt cannot mean-
ingfully be distinguished from the instant case”).
In short,
the argument ﬁnds Hopt controlling by erasing the case’s
controlling distinction.

The argument also pays no heed to the example laid down
by Fenwick’s case. Surely we can imagine a witness com-
petency rule that would operate in a manner similar to the
law in that case (e. g., a witness to a treasonous act is not