Cite as: 518 U. S. 37 (1996)
Opinion of Scalia, J.
at 300, and were "well within the basic rationale of the exception for declarations against interest," id., at 302. Thus, the holding of Chambers—if one can be discerned from such a fact-intensive case—is certainly not that a defendant is denied "a fair opportunity to defend against the State's accusations" whenever "critical evidence" favorable to him is excluded, but rather that erroneous evidentiary rulings can, in combination, rise to the level of a due process violation.
Respondent cites our decision in Crane v. Kentucky, 476 U. S. 683 (1986), as evidence that his version of the "Chambers principle" governs our jurisprudence. He highlights statements in Crane to the effect that "an essential component of procedural fairness is an opportunity to be heard," which would effectively be denied "if the State were permitted to exclude competent, reliable evidence . . . when such evidence is central to the defendant's claim of innocence." Id., at 690; Brief for Respondent 31. But the very next sentence of that opinion (which respondent omits) makes perfectly clear that we were not setting forth an absolute entitlement to introduce crucial, relevant evidence: "In the absence of any valid state justification, exclusion of this kind of exculpatory evidence deprives a defendant of the basic right to have the prosecutor's case encounter and survive the crucible of meaningful adversarial testing." 476 U. S., at 690-691 (emphasis added) (internal quotation marks omitted). Our holding that the exclusion of certain evidence in that case violated the defendant's constitutional rights rested not on a theory that all "competent, reliable evidence" must be admitted, but rather on the ground that the Supreme Court of Kentucky's sole rationale for the exclusion (that the evidence "did not relate to the credibility of the confession," Crane v. Commonwealth, 690 S. W. 2d 753, 755 (1985)) was wrong. See 476 U. S., at 687. Crane does nothing to undermine the principle that the introduction of relevant evidence can be limited by the State for a "valid" reason, as it has been by Montana.
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