  The effects of the odd-even constraint - as an interleaver design criterion -
on the performance of rate-1/2 binary turbo codes are revisited. According to
the current understanding, its adoption is favored because it makes the
information bits be uniformly protected, each one by its own parity bit. In
this paper, we provide instances that contradict this point of view suggesting
for a different explanation of the constraint's behavior, in terms of distance
spectrum.
