Arbitrary Limits on the Defense are (Surprise) Unconstitutional

Holmes v. South Carolina

Holmes was convicted by a jury of murder, rape, burglary and robbery. On appeal he was granted a new trial where the prosecution offered nearly conclusive forensic evidence of the defendant’s guilt. The defense attacked the handling of the evidence, argued that the police attempted to frame the defendant, and pointed to various statements in which a third party (White) accepted the blame, and acknowledged the defendant’s innocence, for the crime. White denied these statements in court. The question here is whether a rule which bars the admission of evidence pointing to a third party, in the face of nearly conclusive evidence of the defendant’s guilt, violates the defendant’s constitutional rights.

The trial court excluded the evidence based on a South Carolina rule that such evidence is admissible if it “raise[s] a reasonable inference or presumption as to [the defendant’s] own innocence” but is if it merely “cast[s] a bare suspicion upon another” or “raise[s] a conjectural inference as to the commission of the crime by another.” The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled that where there is strong (forensic) evidence of a defendant’s guilt, the evidence of a third party’s guilt does not raise a reasonable inference about the defendant’s innocence. On the other hand, the Court notes here, the Constitution “guarantees criminal defendants a ‘meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense,’” and prohibits rules that are arbitrary or disproportionately restrictive in light of the legitimate interests they are designed to further. Conversely, the Constitution permits judges “to exclude evidence that is ‘repetitive . . . , only marginally relevant’ or poses an undue risk of ‘harassment, prejudice, [or] confusion of the issues.’”

The Court gives a number of examples of the instances on either end of this spectrum, including a number of cases on either side addressing the very question here. The Court suggests that the South Carolina Supreme Court diverged from the general rule that evidence of a third party’s involvement is admissible to the extent and only to the extent that it is inconsistent with the defendant’s guilt, and inadmissible where its only effect can be to cast bare suspicion or raise conjectural inference. Specifically, the court inappropriately extended the rule to situations, as here, where the trial judge is concerned not with “the probative value or the potential adverse effects” of the evidence, but rather with the strength of the prosecution’s evidence. The Court takes issue with the way the South Carolina rule evaluates only one side of the evidence, arguing that the rule is only logical if the prosecution’s proof is conceded or presumed, and without such a presumption the rule is not more logical than a rule prohibiting the prosecution from introducing evidence of the defendant’s guilt if it seems that there could only be one perpetrator and the defendant could produce evidence implicating someone else. The rule is therefore arbitrary.

That this took a Supreme Court ruling to clear up is just sad.