Washington v. Texas
The Court struck down a Texas law that automatically barred a defendant from calling an accomplice charged in the same crime as a defense witness, ruling that the right to call favorable witnesses is part of a fair trial guaranteed by the Constitution.
The decision extends the Sixth Amendment's compulsory-process right to state courts for the first time and forbids blanket rules that keep whole categories of willing, competent witnesses off the stand just because of who they are.
“The right to offer the testimony of witnesses, and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present a defense”
The Court's core statement that compulsory process protects the ability to present a defense, not just to summon witnesses.
How it got here: A Texas trial court excluded the witness under state law and the defendant was convicted; the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed, and the Supreme Court agreed to review the case.
The Case in Depth
What happened
An 18-year-old was on trial for murder after a shooting outside the home of a girl he had dated. He said another man, Charles Fuller, had fired the fatal shot while intoxicated and against his wishes. Fuller, already convicted of the same murder, would have corroborated this account, but Texas law barred people charged as coparticipants in the same crime from testifying for one another.
The question before the Court
Could Texas bar a man on trial for murder from putting his alleged accomplice on the stand to testify in his defense?
The Court's answer
No — the Court ruled that Texas could not automatically bar an alleged accomplice from testifying for the defendant, because the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of compulsory process for favorable witnesses applies to state trials and protects a defendant's right to actually use the testimony of witnesses he can bring to court, not just summon them.
The Court found Texas's blanket disqualification rule arbitrary, especially since the same witness could freely testify against the defendant for the prosecution. Because the excluded witness had personally observed the shooting and his testimony was material to the defense, barring him from testifying violated the defendant's constitutional right to present his side of the case to the jury.
Curious how the Court got there? See the step-by-step legal reasoning →
Why it matters
Criminal defendants across the country can no longer be blocked by state rules that flatly disqualify certain categories of witnesses — like alleged accomplices — from testifying in their defense. States must instead evaluate witnesses individually rather than excluding them wholesale, giving defendants a fairer chance to present their side of events to a jury.
What changes now
The conviction is reversed, meaning Texas can retry the defendant but must allow him to call his alleged accomplice as a witness if he chooses. The ruling establishes that the compulsory-process right applies to state trials nationwide, so other states with similar blanket witness-disqualification rules can no longer enforce them against defendants seeking to call codefendants or accomplices in their own defense.
What this does not decide
The Court noted its ruling does not disturb recognized testimonial privileges, such as against self-incrimination or for lawyers, doctors, or spouses, and does not address non-arbitrary rules excluding witnesses who are mentally incapable of understanding or recalling events.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Harlan
“This is rather a case in which the State has recognized as relevant and competent the testimony of this type of witness, but has arbitrarily barred its use by the defendant.”Harlan's narrower explanation for why Texas's rule violated due process.
Justice Harlan agreed the conviction should be reversed but rejected the majority's reasoning that the Sixth Amendment's compulsory-process clause is directly incorporated against the states. He viewed due process as a broader guarantee against arbitrary and purposeless restraints, not a checklist of Bill of Rights provisions. He found the real problem was that Texas let the same witness testify for the prosecution but arbitrarily barred him from testifying for the defense, with no justification for that discrimination.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court first asked whether the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of compulsory process for obtaining favorable witnesses is so basic to a fair trial that it applies to state courts through the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, following the same approach used for other Sixth Amendment rights like the right to counsel and confrontation.
- It concluded that the right to present a defense — including calling and using one's own witnesses, not just compelling their attendance — is a core piece of due process, since a trial must let the jury hear both sides' versions of events.
- The Court then traced the common-law history behind the compulsory-process clause, noting the Framers adopted it to reject the old rule barring criminal defendants from calling any witnesses at all, and that courts later abandoned similar disqualifications based on a witness's personal interest.
- Applying this history, the Court held that a blanket rule barring an accomplice from testifying for a codefendant — while still allowing the same accomplice to testify against him for the prosecution — was arbitrary and could not be justified as a rational way to screen out untrustworthy testimony.
- Because the excluded witness was competent, willing, and had personally observed the shooting, and his testimony was material to the defense, the Court concluded that Texas's automatic exclusion rule violated the compulsory-process right as applied to this defendant.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Distinguishes United States v. Reid (12 How. 361)
The Court noted this 1852 ruling upholding accomplice disqualification had already been expressly overruled by a later case.
Reaffirms Rosen v. United States (245 U. S. 467)
The Court relied on this 1918 decision abandoning old disqualification rules, holding its reasoning was required by the Sixth Amendment.