Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 648

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

Cite as: 529 U. S. 513 (2000)

573

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

American law, such instances have been almost exclusively
conﬁned to two contexts: perjury, see Weiler v. United
States, 323 U. S. 606 (1945), and treason, see U. S. Const.,
Art. III, § 3, cl. 1 (“No Person shall be convicted of Treason
unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt
Act, or on Confession in open Court.”). See generally Wig-
more, Required Numbers of Witnesses; A Brief History of
the Numerical System in England, 15 Harv. L. Rev. 83, 100–
108 (1901).

The treason statute in effect at the time of John Fenwick’s
conspiracy, like the Treason Clause of our Constitution, em-
bodied just such a quantitative sufﬁciency rule: As long as
the accused traitor put the prosecution to its proof by plead-
ing not guilty, the sworn testimony of two witnesses was
necessary to support a conviction. The Court describes at
great length the attainder of Fenwick, which served as a
cautionary model for Justice Chase’s explication of the fourth
category in Calder. See ante, at 526–530.14 This excursion
into post-Restoration English history is diverting, but the
Court’s statement that “the circumstances of petitioner’s
case parallel those of Fenwick’s case 300 years earlier,” ante,
at 530, simply will not wash. The preamendment version of
Article 38.07 is nothing like the two-witness rule on which
Fenwick vainly relied.15

First, the preamendment version of Article 38.07, unlike
a two-witness rule, did not apply indifferently to all who
testify. Rather, it branded a particular class of witnesses—

14 Tellingly, the Court offers no evidence that anyone at the time of
the Framers considered witness corroboration requirements of the type
involved here to fall within the scope of the ex post facto prohibition.

15 When the Texas Legislature wants to enact a two-witness rule, it
knows how to do so. See Tex. Code Crim. Proc. Ann., Art. 38.15 (Vernon
Supp. 2000) (“No person can be convicted of treason except upon the testi-
mony of at least two witnesses to the same overt act, or upon his own
confession in open court.”); Art. 38.18(a) (“No person may be convicted of
perjury or aggravated perjury if proof that his statement is false rests
solely upon the testimony of one witness other than the defendant.”).