ruling unconstitutional a provision of Maine law requiring a defendant to establish by a preponderance of evidence that he acted in the heat of passion on sudden provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter and holding that "the Due Process Clause requires the prosecution to prove [the absence of heat of passion] beyond a reasonable doubt ... when the issue is properly presented in a homicide case”
How later courts described this case
- ruling unconstitutional a provision of Maine law requiring a defendant to establish by a preponderance of evidence that he acted in the heat of passion on sudden provocation to reduce murder to manslaughter and holding that "the Due Process Clause requires the prosecution to prove [the absence of heat of passion] beyond a reasonable doubt ... when the issue is properly presented in a homicide case”
- finding liberty interest in degrees of murder and violation of due process, explaining, “Maine could impose a life sentence for any felonious homicide—even one that traditionally might be considered involuntary manslaughter—unless the defendant was able to prove that his act was neither intentional nor criminally reckless”
- holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt every fact necessary to constitute a crime charged
- holding that due-process requirement that State must prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, every fact necessary to constitute crime charged cannot be undermined by State’s attempt to shift burden of proof on presence of “heat of passion” to defendant
Written by the judges who cited it.
Later courts went against this
Questioned by State v. Arpin, 122 R.I. 643 (1980)
421 U.S. 684, 95 S. Ct. 1881, 44 L. Ed. 2d 508 (1975) have recently cast doubt on the constitutionality of the type of state practice upheld in
Disagreed with by Eugene Williams Gall, Jr. v. Phil Parker, Warden, 231 F.3d 265 (2000)
See id. After carefully considering the dissent’s points and underlying reasoning, we respectfully disagree with both assertions.
Limited by State v. Burrow, 293 Or. 691 (1982)
The court made it clear that Mullaney is to be limited to its facts, and specifically rejected the theory advanced in the dissenting opinion in apparent anticipation of the situation presented here.
Distinguished
Distinguished by State v. Ryan, 249 Neb. 218 (1996)
The Patterson Court found that Mullaney was distinguishable because in Mullaney the defendant was required to prove an element of the crime, whereas in Patterson, extreme emotional disturbance was not a part of the definition of the crime.
Distinguished by United States v. Mary Jayne Roberts, United States of America v. Mark Douglas Petty, 980 F.2d 645 (1992)
421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), is inapplicable to sentencing determinations under § 2D1.1(b)(1) because
Distinguished by Wilson v. Commonwealth, 225 Va. 33 (1983)
We distinguished Mullaney in Hodge v. Commonwealth, 217 Va. 338, 345, 228 S.E.2d 692, 697 (1976), where we analyzed an instruction that “every unlawful homicide is presumed to be murder in the second degree,” and “the burden is upon the defendant” to reduce it to manslaughter or excusable homicide.
Distinguished by Howell v. State, 418 So. 2d 1164 (1982)
We are confronted with a type of defense, and therefore the due process violations involved in shifting the burden of proof in Mullaney are inapplicable.
The opinion
Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom The Chief Justice joins, concurring.
While I join in the Court’s opinion, the somewhat peculiar posture of the case as it comes to us leads me to add these observations.
Respondent made no objection to the trial court’s instruction respecting the burden of proof on the issue of whether he had acted in the heat of passion on sudden provocation. Nonetheless, on his appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine, that court considered his objection to the charge on its merits and held the charge to be a correct statement of Maine law. It neither made any point of respondent’s failure to object to the instruction in the trial court, * nor did it give any consideration to the doctrine long approved by this Court that the *705 instructions to the jury are not to be judged in artificial isolation, but must be viewed in the context of the overall charge. Boyd v. United States, 271 U. S. 104, 107 (1926); Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U. S. 141, 147 (1973). It likewise expressed no view on whether, even though the instruction might have amounted to constitutional error, that error could have been harmless. Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967). Its reason for not treating the possibility that the error was harmless may have been because, as this Court’s opinion points out, ante, at 687, the jury came back in the midst of its deliberations and requested further instructions on the doctrine of implied malice aforethought and the definition of “heat of passion.”
The case which has now reached us through the route of federal habeas corpus, therefore, is a highly unusual one which does present the abstract question of law isolated by the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine and now decided here.
I agree with the Court that In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358 (1970), does require that the prosecution prove beyond a reasonable doubt every element which constitutes the crime charged against_a defendant. T see nb~mcdnsistehcyrb“etween that holding and the holding of Leland v. Oregon, 343 U. S. 790 (1952). In the latter case this Court held that there was no constitutional requirement that the State shoulder the burden of proving the sanity of the defendant.
The Court noted in Leland that the issue of insanity as a defense to a criminal charge was considered by the jury only after it had found that all elements of the offense, including the mens rea, if any, required by state law, had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Id., at 792, 795 . Although as the state court’s instructions in Leland recognized, id., at 794-795 , evidence relevant *706 to insanity as defined by state law may also be relevant to whether the required mens rea was present, the existence or nonexistence of legal insanity bears no necessary relationship to the existence or nonexistence of the required mental elements of the crime. For this reason, Oregon’s placement of the burden of proof of insanity on Leland, unlike Maine’s redefinition of homicide in the instant case, did not effect an unconstitutional shift in the State’s traditional burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt of all necessary elements of the offense. Id., at 795 . Both the Court’s opinion and the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan in In re Winship, supra, stress the importance of proof beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal case as “bottomed on a fundamental value determination of our society that it is far worse to convict an innocent man than to let a guilty man go free.” 397 U. S., at 372 (Harlan, J., concurring). Having once met that rigorous burden of proof that, for example, in a case such as this, the defendant not only killed a fellow human being, but did it with malice aforethought, the State could quite consistently with such a constitutional principle conclude that a defendant who sought to establish the defense of insanity, and thereby escape any punishment whatever for a heinous crime, should bear the laboring oar on such an issue.
While Fay v. Noia, 372 U. S. 391 (1963), holds that a failure to appeal through the state-court system from a constitutionally infirm judgment of conviction does not bar subsequent relief in federal habeas corpus, failure to object to a proposed instruction should stand on a different footing. It is one thing to fail to utilize the appeal process to cure a defect which already inheres in a judgment of conviction, but it is quite another to forgo making an objection or exception which might prevent the error from ever occurring. Cf. Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233 (1973). Here, however, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court nevertheless affirmatively ruled that the issue was cognizable despite respondent’s failure to object at trial. See majority opinion, ante, at 688 n. 7. And the State did not contest the propriety of consideration of the issue in federal habeas.