Justice Alito's Opinion in Holmes v. South Carolina
From Justice Alito's career on the Third Circuit, there were already substantial grounds to hope that his rationalistic temperament might do something to hold any alleged ideological biases in check. Those hopes remain very much alive after his maiden opinion today in Holmes v. South Carolina, in which the Court reversed a death sentence that rested on a deck-stacking rule of evidence adopted by the South Carolina courts.
Indeed, on reading the Court's unanimous opinion in Holmes, we feel cautiously encouraged that the Supreme Court may still occasionally serve a meaningful role in defending the rights of criminal defendants against truly grotesque depredations, even when other tribunals may be disconcertingly slow to see a problem.
The evidentiary rule at issue in Holmes surely falls in that category. The prosecutors in Holmes had good forensic evidence. The defendant, predictably enough, had arguments that the forensic evidence was flawed. But the defendant also had credible evidence that another person had admitted to committing the crime. The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the trial court's exclusion of the latter, under an evidentiary rule barring merely "conjectural" evidence of third-party guilt in circumstances where the prosecution had strong forensic proof.
In point of fact, the evidence of the third-party admission in Holmes was anything but "conjectural," and so the Supreme Court's result probably could have been reached by relatively modest jurisprudential means. What interests us is the more encompassing logic deployed by Justice Alito to reach it. To oversimplify slightly, Justice Alito concluded that one party's evidence could not be excluded on the sole basis that the other party's evidence, if taken as true, would be conclusive. Justice Alito devastatingly recited the simple counterargument: if the defendant's exculpatory evidence in Holmes were simply taken as true, it would follow, by parity of reasoning, that the prosecution's forensic evidence should be inadmissible. To decide whether the evidence is true, of course, is the core function of the trial.
The real holding of Holmes, we realize, will probably prove narrower than that, in practice. And because the decision is grounded in the Sixth Amendment right to present a defense, it has no direct application in civil cases. Still, the fallacious reasoning embodied in the evidentiary rule overturned in Holmes remains prevalent in domains beyond the criminal justice setting. Not uncommonly, courts will exclude one side's expert evidence based on the tacit or explicit premise that the other side's is correct. The lines in this latter situation can be hard to draw. We wonder, though, if Justice Alito's reasoning might somehow be put to use in drawing them.
Indeed, on reading the Court's unanimous opinion in Holmes, we feel cautiously encouraged that the Supreme Court may still occasionally serve a meaningful role in defending the rights of criminal defendants against truly grotesque depredations, even when other tribunals may be disconcertingly slow to see a problem.
The evidentiary rule at issue in Holmes surely falls in that category. The prosecutors in Holmes had good forensic evidence. The defendant, predictably enough, had arguments that the forensic evidence was flawed. But the defendant also had credible evidence that another person had admitted to committing the crime. The South Carolina Supreme Court upheld the trial court's exclusion of the latter, under an evidentiary rule barring merely "conjectural" evidence of third-party guilt in circumstances where the prosecution had strong forensic proof.
In point of fact, the evidence of the third-party admission in Holmes was anything but "conjectural," and so the Supreme Court's result probably could have been reached by relatively modest jurisprudential means. What interests us is the more encompassing logic deployed by Justice Alito to reach it. To oversimplify slightly, Justice Alito concluded that one party's evidence could not be excluded on the sole basis that the other party's evidence, if taken as true, would be conclusive. Justice Alito devastatingly recited the simple counterargument: if the defendant's exculpatory evidence in Holmes were simply taken as true, it would follow, by parity of reasoning, that the prosecution's forensic evidence should be inadmissible. To decide whether the evidence is true, of course, is the core function of the trial.
The real holding of Holmes, we realize, will probably prove narrower than that, in practice. And because the decision is grounded in the Sixth Amendment right to present a defense, it has no direct application in civil cases. Still, the fallacious reasoning embodied in the evidentiary rule overturned in Holmes remains prevalent in domains beyond the criminal justice setting. Not uncommonly, courts will exclude one side's expert evidence based on the tacit or explicit premise that the other side's is correct. The lines in this latter situation can be hard to draw. We wonder, though, if Justice Alito's reasoning might somehow be put to use in drawing them.
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