Cite as: 518 U. S. 37 (1996)
O'Connor, J., dissenting
the establishment of guilt by suppression of evidence supporting the defendant's case.
In Crane, a trial court had held that the defendant could not introduce testimony bearing on the circumstances of his confession, on the grounds that this information bore only on the "voluntariness" of the confession, a matter already resolved. We held that by keeping such critical information from the jury this exclusion "deprived petitioner of his fundamental constitutional right to a fair opportunity to present a defense." 476 U. S., at 687. The Court emphasized that, while States have the power to exclude evidence through evidentiary rules that serve the interests of fairness and reliability, limitations on evidence may exceed the bounds of due process where such limitations undermine a defendant's ability to present exculpatory evidence without serving a valid state justification.
In Washington v. Texas, 388 U. S. 14 (1967), the trial court refused to permit a defense witness to testify on the basis of Texas statutes providing that persons charged or convicted as coparticipants in the same crime could not testify for one another, although they could testify for the State. The Court held that the Constitution prohibited a State from establishing rules to prevent whole categories of defense witnesses from testifying out of a belief that such witnesses were untrustworthy. Such action by the State detracted too severely and arbitrarily from the defendant's right to call witnesses in his favor.
These cases, taken together, illuminate a simple principle: Due process demands that a criminal defendant be afforded a fair opportunity to defend against the State's accusations. Meaningful adversarial testing of the State's case requires that the defendant not be prevented from raising an effective defense, which must include the right to present relevant, probative evidence. To be sure, the right to present evidence is not limitless; for example, it does not permit the defendant to introduce any and all evidence he believes
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