Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 639.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

564

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

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Perhaps the Court has been misdirected by the wording
of Article 38.07, which speaks in both its old and new ver-
sions of evidence upon which a “conviction .
is sup-
portable.” See ante, at 547. That sounds like a “sufﬁciency
of the evidence rule,” until one realizes that any evidence
admissible in a criminal case—i. e., any evidence that a jury
is entitled to consider in determining whether the prosecu-
tion has met its burden of persuasion—is at least potentially
evidence upon which a “conviction . . . is supportable.” Con-
versely, as I have just said, evidence to which the jury may
give no weight in making that determination is effectively
inadmissible.8

In short, no matter how it is phrased, the corroboration
requirement of Article 38.07 is functionally identical to a
conditional rule of witness competency.
If the former ver-
sion of Article 38.07 had provided instead that “the testi-
mony of the victim shall be inadmissible to prove the de-
fendant’s guilt unless corroborated,” it would produce the

8 It is thus no wonder that before 1986 the general rule of witness com-
petency was codiﬁed at Article 38.06 of the Texas Code of Criminal Proce-
dure, and the statute now at issue immediately followed it. Article 38.07
was an exception to the general rule laid out in Article 38.06.
It is logical
to put an exception right after the rule. Yet the Court draws the opposite
inference from that juxtaposition. See ante, at 545, n. 32.

The Court’s related observation that Texas’ general witness competency
statute “already contains its own provision respecting child witnesses,”
ante, at 544–545, is true but irrelevant. Article 38.07’s corroboration re-
quirement has nothing to do with the diminished credibility of child wit-
Indeed, the statute has always permitted juries to credit fully
nesses.
the testimony of sexual offense victims below a certain age (ﬁrst 14, then
18) without any corroboration, the reason apparently being that the legis-
lature considers victims under a certain age to be too young to consent to
sex and then lie about it. See, e. g., Scoggan v. State, 799 S. W. 2d 679,
681 (Tex. Crim. App. 1990); Hernandez v. State, 651 S. W. 2d 746, 752–753
(Tex. Crim. App. 1983) (concurring opinion adopted on rehearing). The
corroboration requirement attaches only to victims above a certain age,
and thus would not be appropriate for inclusion in a “provision respecting
child witnesses.”