state's evidence

Thaddeus Donald Edmonson, a black construction worker, was injured in a jobsite accident at Fort Polk, Louisiana, a federal enclave, when a Leesville Concrete Company employee permitted one of the company's trucks to roll backward and pin him against some construction equipment. Edmonson sued Leesville Concrete Company for negligence in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana and invoked his Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury. During voir dire, Leesville used two of its three peremptory challenges authorized by statute to remove black persons from the prospective jury. Edmonson, who is himself black, requested that the District Court require Leesville to articulate a race-neutral explanation for striking the two jurors, but the District Court denied the request on the ground that Batson does not apply in civil proceedings. As empaneled, the jury included 11 white persons and 1 black person. The jury rendered a verdict for Edmonson, assessing his total damages at $90,000, but attributed 80% of the fault to Edmonson's contributory negligence and awarded him the sum of $18,000. Edmonson appealed, and a divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed, holding that Batson applies to private litigants in civil trials. The full court then ordered rehearing en banc and affirmed the judgment of the District Court, holding that a private litigant in a civil case can exercise peremptory challenges without accountability for alleged racial classifications. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to resolve the issue.

The petitioners, nine young negro men from other states who were ignorant and illiterate, were charged with raping two white girls on a freight train traveling through Alabama on March 25, 1931. The indictment was returned in a state court of first instance on March 31, 1931, and the defendants were arraigned and entered pleas of not guilty the same day. The defendants were tried in three separate groups beginning April 6, 1931, with each trial completed in a single day. Juries found the defendants guilty and imposed the death penalty on all eight who were convicted. The trial court overruled motions for new trials and sentenced the defendants accordingly, after which the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the judgments, with Chief Justice Anderson dissenting. A sheriff's posse seized the defendants before the train reached Scottsboro, and they were taken there amid a large hostile crowd. The sheriff called for militia assistance, and soldiers guarded the defendants at every stage from arrest through trial, while the defendants remained closely confined. No counsel had been employed by the defendants. The trial judge had previously appointed all members of the local bar only for arraignment purposes. The matter of representation was resolved in a brief colloquy that resulted in local lawyers agreeing to help in a limited way. On the morning the first case was called for trial, a Tennessee lawyer who had not been employed and was unfamiliar with Alabama procedure appeared informally and requested to assist appointed local counsel. The trials proceeded immediately after this arrangement, with no prior opportunity for investigation or preparation by any counsel. After the Alabama Supreme Court affirmed the convictions, the cases reached the United States Supreme Court.

On December 27, 1970, Gordon Patterson shot and killed John Northrup in Glens Falls, New York. After a brief and unstable marriage, Patterson had become estranged from his wife Roberta. Roberta had resumed an association with Northrup, a neighbor to whom she had been engaged before her marriage to Patterson. Patterson borrowed a rifle from an acquaintance and went to the residence of his father-in-law. There he observed his wife through a window in a state of semiundress in Northrup's presence. He entered the house and killed Northrup by shooting him twice in the head. Patterson was charged with second-degree murder. At his jury trial in Warren County Court, Patterson raised the affirmative defense of extreme emotional disturbance and presented psychiatric evidence tending to show that he had been extremely emotionally disturbed when he killed Northrup. The jury was instructed that the prosecution had the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt each element of the crime of murder. The defendant had the burden of proving the affirmative defense by a preponderance of the evidence. The jury convicted Patterson of second-degree murder. The Appellate Division affirmed the conviction. While appeal to the New York Court of Appeals was pending, this Court decided Mullaney v. Wilbur. The New York Court of Appeals nevertheless affirmed, distinguishing the Maine statute at issue in Mullaney and holding that New York's allocation of the burden of proof on the affirmative defense was consistent with due process. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari limited to the question whether the burden of proof placed on the defendant by New York law is consistent with the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

On July 12, 1992, respondent James Egelhoff was camping in the Yaak region of northwestern Montana with Roberta Pavola and John Christenson to pick mushrooms. The three sold the mushrooms they had collected and spent the rest of the day and evening drinking in bars and at a private party in Troy, Montana. After leaving the party after 9 p.m. in Christenson's 1974 Ford Galaxy station wagon, the drinking continued, as Egelhoff was seen buying beer at 9:20 p.m. and recalled passing a bottle of Black Velvet with Christenson. Around midnight, officers of the Lincoln County sheriff's department discovered the station wagon stuck in a ditch along U.S. Highway 2. Pavola and Christenson were in the front seat, each dead from a single gunshot to the head. Egelhoff lay in the rear of the car, alive and yelling obscenities, with a blood-alcohol content of .36 percent measured over an hour later. His .38-caliber handgun lay on the floor near the brake pedal with four loaded rounds and two empty casings, and he had gunshot residue on his hands. Egelhoff was charged with two counts of deliberate homicide under Montana law requiring that he purposely or knowingly caused the deaths of another human being. At trial he claimed an unidentified fourth person must have committed the murders, that his extreme intoxication rendered him physically incapable of committing them, and that it accounted for his inability to recall the events. The trial court instructed the jury pursuant to Mont. Code Ann. § 45-2-203 that it could not consider respondent's intoxicated condition in determining the existence of a mental state which is an element of the offense. The jury found Egelhoff guilty on both counts and the court sentenced him to 84 years' imprisonment. The Supreme Court of Montana reversed the convictions. The United States Supreme Court granted certiorari.