546
Opinion of the Court
tion . . . is supportable on" certain evidence. It is Rule 601(a), not Article 38.07, that addresses who is "competent to testify." We think the differences in these laws are plain.33
Moreover, a sufficiency of the evidence rule resonates with the interests to which the Ex Post Facto Clause is addressed in a way that a witness competency rule does not. In particular, the elements of unfairness and injustice in subverting the presumption of innocence are directly implicated by rules lowering the quantum of evidence required to convict. Such rules will always run in the prosecution's favor, because they always make it easier to convict the accused. This is so even if the accused is not in fact guilty, because the coercive pressure of a more easily obtained conviction may induce a defendant to plead to a lesser crime rather than run the risk of conviction on a greater crime. Witness competency rules, to the contrary, do not necessarily run in the State's favor. A felon witness competency rule, for example, might help a defendant if a felon is able to relate credible exculpatory evidence.
Nor do such rules necessarily affect, let alone subvert, the presumption of innocence. The issue of the admissibility of evidence is simply different from the question whether the properly admitted evidence is sufficient to convict the defendant. Evidence admissibility rules do not go to the general issue of guilt, nor to whether a conviction, as a matter of law, may be sustained. Prosecutors may satisfy all the requirements of any number of witness competency
33 The dissent seems unwilling to concede this distinction. Though it admits that under Article 38.07 the uncorroborated victim is "not literally forbidden from testifying," post, at 563, it also insists that testimony is "inadmissible," post, at 571, and that "the jury will not be permitted to consider it," post, at 555, n. 3. See also post, at 557, 565 (referring to Article 38.07 as a rule about witness "credibility"); post, at 556, 570, 575 (referring to Texas' law as a rule of "admissibility"); post, at 553, 557, 563, 564, and n. 8, 575 (referring to the law as one about "competency"). We think it is clear from the text of Article 38.07 and Rule 601, however, that the victim's testimony alone is not inadmissible; it is just insufficient.
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