Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 647.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

572

CARMELL v. TEXAS

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

Calder’s fourth category,” ante, at 530, one that comports
with our precedents and with the underlying purposes of the
Ex Post Facto Clause: Laws that reduce the burden of per-
suasion the prosecution must satisfy to win a conviction may
not be applied to offenses committed before their enactment.
To be sure, this reading would leave the fourth category with
considerably less independent effect than it would have
had in Justice Chase’s day, given our intervening decisions
establishing the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard as a
constitutional minimum under the Due Process Clause. See,
e. g., In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970); Jackson v. Virginia,
443 U. S. 307 (1979). But it is not a reading that necessarily
Imagine, for
renders the category meaningless even today.
example, a statute requiring the prosecution to prove a
particular sentencing enhancement factor—leadership role
in the offense, say, or obstruction of justice—beyond a rea-
sonable doubt. A new statute providing that the factor
could be established by a mere preponderance of the evi-
dence might rank as ex post facto if applied to offenses com-
mitted before its enactment. The same might be said of a
statute retroactively increasing the defendant’s burden of
persuasion as to an afﬁrmative defense.

Burdens of persuasion are qualitative tests of sufﬁciency.
Calder’s fourth category, however, encompasses quantita-
tive sufﬁciency rules as well, for Justice Chase did speak of
a law that “receives less . . . testimony, than the law required
at the time of the commission of the offence.” 3 Dall., at 390
(emphasis added). Cf. Hopt, 110 U. S., at 590 (“Any statu-
tory alteration of the legal rules of evidence which would
authorize conviction upon less proof, in amount or degree,
than was required when the offence was committed” might
be ex post facto. (emphasis added)). Quantitative sufﬁciency
rules are rare in modern Anglo-American law, but some
do exist. Criminal statutes sometimes limit the prosecution
to a particular form of proof, for example, the testimony of
In modern Anglo-
two witnesses to the same overt act.