Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 613

529US2

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538

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Opinion of the Court

facto.’ ” Collins, 497 U. S., at 42 (quoting Beazell, 269
U. S., at 169–170).

Collins then observed in a footnote: “The Beazell deﬁnition
omits the reference by Justice Chase in Calder v. Bull, to
alterations in the ‘legal rules of evidence.’ As cases subse-
quent to Calder make clear, this language was not intended
to prohibit the application of new evidentiary rules in trials
for crimes committed before the changes.” 497 U. S., at 43,
n. 3 (citations omitted). Collins then commented that “[t]he
Beazell formulation is faithful to our best knowledge of the
original understanding of the Ex Post Facto Clause.”
Id.,
at 43.

It seems most accurate to say that Collins is rather
cryptic. While calling Calder’s four categories the “exclu-
sive deﬁnition” of ex post facto laws, it also calls Beazell’s
deﬁnition a “faithful” rendition of the “original understand-
ing” of the Clause, even though that quotation omitted cate-
gory four. And while Collins quotes a portion of Beazell
omitting the fourth category, the immediately preceding
paragraph in Beazell explains that the law at issue in that
case did not change “[t]he quantum and kind of proof re-
quired to establish guilt,” 269 U. S., at 170, a statement dis-
tinguishing, rather than overruling, Calder’s fourth category.
If Collins had intended to resurrect a long forgotten origi-
nal understanding of the Ex Post Facto Clause shorn of the
fourth category, we think it strange that it would have done
so in a footnote. Stranger still would be its reliance on a
single case from 1925, which did not even implicate, let alone
purport to overrule, the fourth category, and which did not
even mention Fenwick’s case. But this Court does not dis-
card longstanding precedent in this manner. Further still,
Collins itself expressly overruled two of our prior cases;
if the Court that day were intent on overruling part of
Calder as well, it surely would have said so directly, rather
than act in such an ambiguous manner.