Carmell v. Texas

Justice Ginsburg,

with whom The ChieF Justice, Justice O’Connor, and Justice Kennedy join, dissenting.

The Court today holds that the amended version of Article 38.07 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure reduces the amount of proof necessary to support a sexual assault conviction, and that its retroactive application therefore violates the Ex Post Facto Clause. In so holding, the Court misreads both the Texas statute and our precedents concerning the Ex Post Facto Clause. Article 38.07 is not, as the Court would have it, most accurately characterized as a “sufficiency of the evidence rule”;…