In the late 1800s, when a child wrote to a newspaper editor asking whether there is a Santa Claus, the editor replied in what became one of the most quoted and reprinted editorials ever:
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus.
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/yes-virginia-there-is-a-santa-claus-1897/ (last visited January 25, 2025). Now the United States Supreme Court has sent a “yes, Oklahoma” message to that sate and to all state and federal courts – there is a Due Process protection against “evidence…so unduly prejudicial as to render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair…”
A little context is needed. In a capital [death penalty] case in Oklahoma, a wife was accused of conspiring to have her husband killed to then collect insurance proceeds. [Yes, this brings to mind the wonderful but dark movie DOUBLE INDEMNITY with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/ .]
Here, the prosecutor made sure to pillory the wife, highlighting her “sex life and about her failings as a mother and wife[.]” Andrew v. White, 2025 U.S. LEXIS 406, *1 The salacious details included
the prosecution elicit[ing] testimony about Andrew’s sexual partners reaching back two decades; about the outfits she wore to dinner or during grocery runs; about the underwear she packed for vacation; and about how often she had sex in her car. At least two of the prosecution’s guilt-phase witnesses took the stand exclusively to testify about Andrew’s provocative clothing, and others were asked to comment on whether a good mother would dress or behave the way Andrew had. In its closing statement, the prosecution again invoked these themes, including by displaying Andrew’s “thong underwear” to the jury, by reminding the jury of Andrew’s alleged affairs during college, and by emphasizing that Andrew “had sex on [her husband] over and over and over” while “keeping a boyfriend on the side.”
Id., 2025 U.S. LEXIS 406, *2-3.
Because the case reached federal court as a habeas action, no relief could be granted unless the state courts unreasonably applied clearly established federal law, a requisite that has been interpreted to mean that the United States Supreme Court has expressly affirmed that principle. The lower federal courts found that no such U.S. Supreme Court precedent existed.
On January 21, 2025, the United States Supreme Court said that indeed it had established this principle, in particular that “the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides a mechanism for relief against the introduction of evidence that is so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair.” Id., 2025 U.S. LEXIS 406, *6-7 It then remanded the case for a determination of whether the flagrant shaming of Ms. Andrews met that standard, either when the jury decided to impose the death sentence or earlier when it found Ms. Andrew guilty.
Why write about this? Because the Constitution matters as a check on errors in the admission or exclusion of evidence. The Court said so nearly twenty years ago when it held in South Carolina v. Holmes that the Due Process right to present a defense could overcome state rules of evidence excluding certain forms of proof that would support a claim that another person committed the crime; and it did so even earlier, in 1979 in Green v. Georgia, when it held that Due Process required admission of reliable hearsay that would offer mitigation proof at a capital sentencing even if inadmissible under state hearsay rules.
The Due Process guarantee in those cases and in Andrew are core to ensuring a fair trial. Not every case (and perhaps not even most) will involve an exclusion of exculpatory proof or admission of unfairly prejudicial information sufficient to violate the Constitution. But the inquiry is never over when it appears that state or federal evidence rules were complied with – that fundamental fairness principle that assesses whether, when evidence is admitted, it “so infected the trial with unfairness…”
I will not debate the existence of Santa Claus; but I will paraphrase the editor who answered the 8 year old’s question:
there is a Due Process Claus. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary and unfair and dangerous would be the world if there were no Due Process Clause.