Cite as: 518 U. S. 37 (1996)
Souter, J., dissenting
of a certain class of defendants, who might otherwise be able to prove that they did not satisfy a requisite element of the offense. The historical fact that this disallowance once existed at common law is not sufficient to save the statute today. I would affirm the judgment of the Montana Supreme Court.
Justice Souter, dissenting.
I have no doubt that a State may so define the mental element of an offense that evidence of a defendant's voluntary intoxication at the time of commission does not have exculpatory relevance and, to that extent, may be excluded without raising any issue of due process. I would have thought the statute at issue here (Mont. Code Ann. § 45-2- 203 (1995)) had implicitly accomplished such a redefinition, but I read the opinion of the Supreme Court of Montana as indicating that it had no such effect, and I am bound by the state court's statement of its domestic law.
Even on the assumption that Montana's definitions of the purposeful and knowing culpable mental states were untouched by § 45-2-203, so that voluntary intoxication remains relevant to each, it is not a foregone conclusion that our cases preclude the State from declaring such intoxication evidence inadmissible. A State may typically exclude even relevant and exculpatory evidence if it presents a valid justification for doing so. There may (or may not) be a valid justification to support a State's decision to exclude, rather than render irrelevant, evidence of a defendant's voluntary intoxication. Montana has not endeavored, however, to advance an argument to that effect. Rather, the State has effectively restricted itself to advancing undoubtedly sound reasons for defining the mental state element so as to make voluntary intoxication generally irrelevant (though its own Supreme Court has apparently said the legislature failed to do that) and to demonstrating that evidence of voluntary intoxication was irrelevant at common law (a fact that goes
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