Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
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529US2

Unit: $U52

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CARMELL v. TEXAS

Opinion of the Court

Cummings v. Missouri addressed an ex post facto chal-
lenge to certain amendments to the Missouri State Con-
stitution made in 1865. When read together, those amend-
ments listed a series of acts deemed criminal (all dealing
with the giving of aid or comfort to anyone engaged in armed
hostility against the United States), and then declared that
unless a person engaged in certain professions (e. g., lawyers
and clergymen) swore an oath of loyalty, he “shall, on con-
viction [for failing to swear the oath], be punished” by a ﬁne,
imprisonment, or both.
Id., at 279–281. We held that these
provisions violated the Ex Post Facto Clause.

Writing for the Court, Justice Field ﬁrst observed that
“[b]y an ex post facto law is meant one which imposes a pun-
ishment for an act which was not punishable at the time it
was committed; or imposes additional punishment to that
then prescribed; or changes the rules of evidence by which
less or different testimony is sufﬁcient to convict than was
then required.”
Id., at 325–326. The Court then held
the amendments violated the Ex Post Facto Clause in all
these respects: some of the offenses deemed criminal by
the amendments were not criminal acts before then, id., at
327–328; other acts were previously criminal, but now they
carried a greater criminal sanction, id., at 328; and, most
importantly for present purposes, the amendments per-
mitted conviction on less testimony than was previously
sufﬁcient, because they “subvert the presumptions of in-
nocence, and alter the rules of evidence, which heretofore,
under the universally recognized principles of the common
law, have been supposed to be fundamental and unchange-
able,” ibid. The Court continued: “They assume that the
parties are guilty; they call upon the parties to establish
their innocence; and they declare that such innocence can be
shown only in one way—by an inquisition, in the form of an
Ibid.
expurgatory oath, into the consciences of the parties.”
It is correct that Cummings held Missouri’s constitutional
amendments invalid under the fourth category because