562
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
prosecution's admissible evidence will be sufficient to support a conviction if a rational factfinder presented with that evidence could find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The 1993 repeal of the corroboration requirement for victims between the ages of 14 and 18 did not lower that "sufficiency of the evidence" hurdle; it simply expanded the range of methods the State could use to surmount it.
To be sure, one might descriptively say in an individual case that the uncorroborated testimony of the victim would be "sufficient" to convict under the new version of Article 38.07 and "insufficient" under the old. But that cannot be enough to invalidate a statute as ex post facto. If it were, then all evidentiary rules that work to the defendant's detriment would be unconstitutional as applied to offenses committed before their enactment—an outcome our cases decisively reject. See infra, at 570-571 (discussing Thompson v. Missouri, 171 U. S. 380 (1898), and Hopt v. Territory of Utah, 110 U. S. 574 (1884), which upheld the retroactive application of evidentiary rules governing the authentication of documents and the competency of felons to testify, respectively). A defendant whose conviction turned, for example, on an item of hearsay evidence considered inadmissible at the time of the offense but made admissible by a later enacted statute might accurately describe the new statute as one that permits conviction on less evidence than was "sufficient" under prior law. But our precedents establish that such a defendant has no valid ex post facto claim. See infra, at 570-571. Neither does Carmell.
The Court attempts to distinguish Article 38.07 from garden-variety evidentiary rules by asserting that the latter "are ordinarily evenhanded, in the sense that they may benefit either the State or the defendant in any given case." Ante, at 533, n. 23. The truth of this assertion is not at all clear. Evidence is never admissible in its own right; it must be admitted for some purpose. Rules of admissibility typically take that basic fact into account, often restricting the
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