Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 646.0

529US2

Unit: $U52

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

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

571

Ginsburg, J., dissenting

not attach criminality to any act previously done, and
which was innocent when done; nor aggravate any
crime theretofore committed; nor provide a greater
punishment therefor than was prescribed at the time of
its commission; nor do they alter the degree, or lessen
the amount or measure, of the proof which was made
necessary to conviction when the crime was committed.”
Id., at 589.

As the quoted passage shows, the Court in Hopt rejected
the defendant’s Ex Post Facto Clause claim while retaining
Calder’s fourth category. The same outcome should obtain
today, for Hopt cannot meaningfully be distinguished from
the instant case.

The Court asserts that “Article 38.07 plainly ﬁts” the
fourth Calder category, because “[r]equiring only the vic-
tim’s testimony to convict, rather than the victim’s testi-
mony plus other corroborating evidence is surely ‘less tes-
timony required to convict’
in any straightforward sense
of those words.” Ante, at 530. Yet to declare Article 38.07
ex post facto on that basis is to overrule Hopt without saying
so. For if the amended version of Article 38.07 requires
“less testimony . . . to convict,” then so do countless eviden-
tiary rules, including the felon competency rule whose retro-
In both this case and
active application we upheld in Hopt.
Hopt, a conviction based on evidence previously deemed in-
admissible was sustained pursuant to a broadened rule re-
garding the competency of testimonial evidence. The mere
fact that the new version of Article 38.07 makes some con-
victions easier to obtain cannot be enough to preclude its
retroactive application.
“Even though it may work to the
disadvantage of a defendant, a procedural change is not
ex post facto.” Dobbert v. Florida, 432 U. S. 282, 293 (1977).
In short, the Court’s expansive new reading of the Ex Post
Facto Clause cannot be squared with this Court’s prior de-
cisions. Rather than embrace such an unprecedented ap-
proach, I would advance a “commonsense understanding of