| Court: | Wisconsin Supreme Court |
| Facts: | Schultz got drunk. While drunk, he shot a guy. There was a mix-up with the jury instructions. |
| Posture: | Guilty at trial, affirmed on appeal. |
| Issue: | Did the jury instructions violate due process? |
| Holding: | Yes. Reversed and remanded for new trial. |
| Rule: | Intent is an element of murder. Intoxication is a defense that negatives that element. Therefore, under Patterson and Mullaney, it's not permissible to shift onto the defendant the burden of disproving this element. |
| Reasoning: | A reasonable juror could have misunderstood the instruction to say that the defendant had to prove incapacity to form intent. That wouldn't be proper. |
| Dicta: | Dissent: most jurors don't understand the instructions anyway. |