574
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
sexual assault victims aged 14 or older—as less competent than others to speak in court. Second, as I have already described, the Texas statute did not restrict the State to one prescribed form of proof. Both before and after the 1993 amendment, introduction of the victim's corroborated testimony was neither required nor necessarily sufficient to sustain a conviction. Prosecutors' compliance with both the old and new versions of Article 38.07 thus "says absolutely nothing about whether they have introduced a quantum of evidence sufficient to convict the offender." Ante, at 547, 551-552.16 On the contrary, the only sufficiency rule applicable in Texas sexual offense prosecutions has always been a qualitative one: The State's evidence must be sufficient to prove every element of the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.
That should not be surprising. It makes little sense in our modern legal system to conceive of standards of proof in quantitative terms. In a civil case, the winner is the party that produces better evidence, not the party that produces more evidence. Similarly, in a criminal trial the prosecution need not introduce any fixed amount of evidence, so long as the evidence it does introduce could persuade a rational fact-finder beyond a reasonable doubt. "Our system of justice rests on the general assumption that the truth is not to be determined merely by the number of witnesses on each side of a controversy. In gauging the truth of conflicting evidence, a jury has no simple formulation of weights and measures on which to rely. The touchstone is always credibility; the ultimate measure of testimonial worth is quality and not
16 Noncompliance with the former version of Article 38.07 does say something: The statute mandates acquittal if the prosecution comes forward with no evidence beyond the victim's testimony, which is deemed unreliable standing alone. But as the Court itself recognizes, "a witness competency rule that . . . has the practical effect of telling us what evidence would result in acquittal does not really speak to Calder's fourth category." Ante, at 551.
Page: Index Previous 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007