In a ruling that may well stop some criminal sex abuse cases against a number of former Roman Catholic priests, the U.S. Supreme Court narrowly shot down a California law allowing prosecutions for long-ago sex crimes.
The case in question had nothing to do with priests. The law was challenged by an elderly man whose daughters reportedly claimed they were too afraid to report him until they had become adults themselves.
Writing for a tightly divided 5-4 majority, Justice Stephen Breyer said the California law collided with the Constitution's prohibition against ex post facto law. "Long ago," Breyer wrote, "the Court pointed out that the clause protects liberty by preventing governments from enacting statutes with 'manifestly unjust and oppressive' retroactive effects…a statute of limitations reflects a legislative judgment that, after a certain time, no quantum of evidence is sufficient to convict."
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy – who wrote for the majority in shooting down Texas's sodomy law earlier June 26 – dissented sharply, saying the California law didn't criminalize conduct that wasn't criminal conduct before the law was made.
"(I)t allows the prosecutor to seek the same punishment as the law authorized at the time the offense was committed and no more; and, it does not alter the government's burden to establish the elements of crime," Kennedy wrote, in an opinion joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. "…The (majority's) opinion harms not only our ex post facto jurisprudence but also these and future victims of child abuse."
