Scott Leslie Carmell v. Texas (529 U.S. 513)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 1, 2000 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 529 U.S. 513 · 120 S. Ct. 1620
- Decided
- May 1, 2000
- Term
- October Term 1999
- Vote
- 5–4
- Majority author
- Justice Stevens
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
- Constitutional ruling
- State/territorial law held unconstitutional
Opinion excerpt
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion of the Court. An amendment to a Texas statute that went into effect on September 1, 1993, authorized conviction of certain sexual offenses on the victim’s testimony alone. The previous statute required the victim’s testimony plus other corroborating evidence to convict the offender. The question presented is whether that amendment may be applied in a trial for offenses committed before the amendment’s effective date without violating the constitutional prohibition against state ex post facto” laws. I In 1996, a Texas grand jury returned a 15-count indictment charging petitioner with various sexual offenses against his stepdaughter. The alleged conduct took place over more than four years, from February 1991 to March 1995, when the victim was 12 to 16 years old. The conduct ceased after the victim told her mother what had happened. Petitioner was convicted on all 15 counts. The two most serious counts charged him with aggravated sexual assault, and petitioner was sentenced to life imprisonment on those two counts. For each of the other 13 offenses (5 counts of sexual assault and 8 counts of indecency with a child), petitioner received concurrent sentences of 20 years. Until September 1, 1993, the following statute was in effect in Texas: “A conviction under Chapter 21, Section 22.011, or Section 22.021, Penal Code, is supportable on the…
Excerpt of a 79,893-character opinion. The full text and citation network load in the interactive viewer above.