Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 627.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

552

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Opinion of the Court

evidence sufﬁcient to convict the offender. Sufﬁciency of the
evidence rules, however, tell us precisely that.35

X

For these reasons, we hold that petitioner’s convictions on
counts 7 through 10, insofar as they are not corroborated by
other evidence, cannot be sustained under the Ex Post Facto
Clause, because Texas’ amendment to Article 38.07 falls
within Calder’s fourth category.
It seems worth remem-
bering, at this point, Joseph Story’s observation about the
Clause:

“ ‘If the laws in being do not punish an offender, let him
go unpunished; let the legislature, admonished of the

35 The dissent contends that the witness competency rule “would pro-
duce the same results” as a sufﬁciency rule, post, at 564–565 (emphasis de-
leted), and above we have been willing to assume as much for argument’s
It would not
sake. But the dissent’s statement is not entirely correct.
be the witness competency rule that would produce the same result, but
that rule in combination with the normally operative sufﬁciency rule.
Failure to comply with the requirements of Article 38.07, by contrast,
would mean that the evidence is insufﬁcient to convict by the force of that
law alone. That difference demonstrates the very distinction between
witness competency rules and sufﬁciency of the evidence rules, points to
precisely the distinction that Hopt drew, and illustrates why (contrary to
the dissent’s contention) our conclusion about Article 38.07 does not apply
to “countless evidentiary rules.” Post, at 571.

That is also why the dissent’s statement that we have been “mis-
directed” by the plain text of Article 38.07 is wrong. Post, at 564. The
dissent asserts that “any evidence” admitted under an applicable rule
of evidence could “potentially” support a conviction, ibid., and therefore
Article 38.07’s explicit speciﬁcation that a conviction “is supportable” if
its requirements are met does not distinguish it from ordinary rules of
evidence. Once again, we point out that whether certain evidence can
support a conviction is not determined by the rule of admissibility itself,
but by some other, separate, normally operative sufﬁciency of the evi-
dence rule. The distinction the dissent ﬁnds illusive is that Article 38.07
itself determines the evidence’s sufﬁciency (that is why it is a sufﬁciency
of the evidence rule), while witness competency rules and other ordinary
rules of evidence do not (because they are admissibility rules, not sufﬁ-
ciency rules). See also n. 23, supra.