Cite as: 518 U. S. 37 (1996)
Ginsburg, J., concurring in judgment
prescribes that voluntary intoxication "may not be taken into consideration in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of [a criminal] offense." For measurement against federal restraints on state action, how should we type that prescription? If § 45-2-203 is simply a rule designed to keep out "relevant, exculpatory evidence," Justice O'Connor maintains, post, at 67, Montana's law offends due process. If it is, instead, a redefinition of the mental-state element of the offense, on the other hand, Justice O'Connor's due process concern "would not be at issue," post, at 71, for "[a] state legislature certainly has the authority to identify the elements of the offenses it wishes to punish," post, at 64, and to exclude evidence irrelevant to the crime it has defined.
Beneath the labels (rule excluding evidence or redefinition of the offense) lies the essential question: Can a State, without offense to the Federal Constitution, make the judgment that two people are equally culpable where one commits an act stone sober, and the other engages in the same conduct after his voluntary intoxication has reduced his capacity for self-control? For the reasons that follow, I resist categorizing § 45-2-203 as merely an evidentiary prescription, but join the Court's judgment refusing to condemn the Montana statute as an unconstitutional enactment.
Section 45-2-203 does not appear in the portion of Montana's Code containing evidentiary rules (Title 26), the expected placement of a provision regulating solely the admissibility of evidence at trial. Instead, Montana's intoxication statute appears in Title 45 ("Crimes"), as part of a chapter entitled "General Principles of Liability." Mont. Code Ann., Tit. 45, ch. 2 (1995). No less than adjacent provisions governing duress and entrapment, § 45-2-203 embodies a legislative judgment regarding the circumstances under which individuals may be held criminally responsible for their actions.
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