Cite as: 529 U. S. 513 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
after Chafee), which may explain why the Framers twice placed their respective prohibitions adjacent to one another. And if the United States means to argue that category four should be abandoned because its illustrative example was a bill of attainder, this would prove entirely too much, because all of the specific examples listed by Justice Chase were passed as bills of attainder.27
Finally, both Texas and the United States argue that we have already effectively cast out the fourth category in Collins v. Youngblood, 497 U. S. 37 (1990). Collins held no such thing. That case began its discussion of the Ex Post Facto Clause by quoting verbatim Justice Chase's "now familiar opinion in Calder" and his four-category definition. Id., at 41-42. After noting that "[e]arly opinions of the Court portrayed this as an exclusive definition of ex post facto laws," id., at 42, the Court then quoted from our opinion in Beazell v. Ohio, 269 U. S. 167 (1925):
" 'It is settled, by decisions of this Court so well known that their citation may be dispensed with, that any statute which punishes as a crime an act previously committed, which was innocent when done; which makes more burdensome the punishment for a crime, after its commission, or which deprives one charged with crime of any defense available according to law at the time when the act was committed, is prohibited as ex post
27 See An Act for the Attainder of Thomas Earle of Strafford of High Treason, 16 Car. I, ch. 38 (1640), in 5 Statutes of the Realm 177 (reprint 1963); An Act for Banishing and Disenabling the Earl of Clarendon, 19 & 20 Car. II, ch. 2 (1667-1668), in 5 Statutes of the Realm, at 628; An Act to Inflict Pains and Penalties on Francis (Atterbury) Lord Bishop of Rochester, 9 Geo. I, ch. 17 (1722); An Act to Prevent Malicious Maiming and Wounding (Coventry Act), 22 & 23 Car. II, ch. 1 (1670). While the bills against the Earl of Clarendon and Bishop Atterbury appear to be bills of pains and penalties, see Chafee 117, 136, as does the Coventry Act, see 2 Wooddeson 638-639, those are simply a subspecies of bills of attainder, the only difference being that the punishment was something less than death. See Drehman v. Stifle, 8 Wall. 595, 601 (1870).
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