Cite as: 529 U. S. 513 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
for felony . . . shall not be witnesses.' " 110 U. S., at 587-588. After the date of the alleged offense, but prior to defendant's trial, the last provision (excluding convicted felons from being witnesses) was repealed.
The defendant argued that the retrospective application of the felon witness-competency provision violated the Ex Post Facto Clause. Because of the emphasis the parties (and the dissent) have placed on Hopt, it is worth quoting at length this Court's explanation for why it rejected the defendant's argument:
"Statutes which simply enlarge the class of persons who may be competent to testify in criminal cases are not ex post facto in their application to prosecutions for crimes committed prior to their passage; for they do not attach criminality to any act previously done, and which was innocent when done; nor aggravate any crime theretofore committed; nor provide a greater punishment therefor than was prescribed at the time of its commission; nor do they alter the degree, or lessen the amount or measure, of the proof which was made necessary to conviction when the crime was committed.
"The crime for which the present defendant was indicted, the punishment prescribed therefor, and the quantity or the degree of proof necessary to establish his guilt, all remained unaffected by the subsequent statute. Any statutory alteration of the legal rules of evidence which would authorize conviction upon less proof, in amount or degree, than was required when the offence was committed, might, in respect of that offence, be obnoxious to the constitutional inhibition upon ex post facto laws. But alterations which do not increase the punishment, nor change the ingredients of the offence or the ultimate facts necessary to establish guilt, but—leaving untouched the nature of the crime and the amount or degree of proof essential to conviction—only remove existing restrictions upon the compe-
543
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