Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 649.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

574

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

sexual assault victims aged 14 or older—as less competent
than others to speak in court. Second, as I have already
described, the Texas statute did not restrict the State to
one prescribed form of proof. Both before and after the
1993 amendment, introduction of the victim’s corroborated
testimony was neither required nor necessarily sufﬁcient to
sustain a conviction. Prosecutors’ compliance with both the
old and new versions of Article 38.07 thus “says absolutely
nothing about whether they have introduced a quantum of
evidence sufﬁcient to convict the offender.” Ante, at 547,
551–552.16 On the contrary, the only sufﬁciency rule appli-
cable in Texas sexual offense prosecutions has always been
a qualitative one: The State’s evidence must be sufﬁcient
to prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable
doubt.

That should not be surprising.

It makes little sense in our
modern legal system to conceive of standards of proof in
quantitative terms.
In a civil case, the winner is the party
that produces better evidence, not the party that produces
more evidence. Similarly, in a criminal trial the prosecution
need not introduce any ﬁxed amount of evidence, so long as
the evidence it does introduce could persuade a rational fact-
ﬁnder beyond a reasonable doubt.
“Our system of justice
rests on the general assumption that the truth is not to be
determined merely by the number of witnesses on each side
of a controversy.
In gauging the truth of conﬂicting evi-
dence, a jury has no simple formulation of weights and meas-
ures on which to rely. The touchstone is always credibility;
the ultimate measure of testimonial worth is quality and not

16 Noncompliance with the former version of Article 38.07 does say
something: The statute mandates acquittal if the prosecution comes for-
ward with no evidence beyond the victim’s testimony, which is deemed
unreliable standing alone. But as the Court itself recognizes, “a witness
competency rule that . . . has the practical effect of telling us what evi-
dence would result in acquittal does not really speak to Calder’s fourth
category.” Ante, at 551.