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. |