Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/524bv.pdf
Page Number: 136

524US1

Unit: $U76

[09-06-00 18:29:27] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 524 U. S. 88 (1998)

91

Opinion of the Court

conclude that such instructions are not constitutionally re-
quired, and we therefore reverse the contrary judgment of
the Court of Appeals.

I

In the early morning hours of March 29, 1980, police re-
ceived an emergency call from the Religious Society of
Friends meetinghouse in Lincoln, Nebraska. Responding to
the call, they found Janet Mesner, the live-in caretaker, lying
on the ﬂoor in the rear of the house with seven stab wounds
in her chest. When an ofﬁcer asked who had stabbed her,
Mesner gave respondent’s name. The ofﬁcers then went to
an upstairs bedroom and found the partially clad dead body
of Victoria Lamm, a friend of Mesner who had been visiting
the meetinghouse. She had been stabbed twice, the ﬁrst
blow penetrating the main pulmonary artery of her heart
and the second her liver. A billfold containing respondent’s
identiﬁcation was lying near Lamm’s body. The police found
underwear, later identiﬁed as respondent’s, in the middle of
the blood-soaked sheets of the bed; subsequent examination
of the underwear revealed semen of respondent’s blood type.
Near the bed, the police found a serrated kitchen knife with
Mesner’s blood on it. Before dying, Mesner told an ofﬁcer
that respondent had raped her. Shortly thereafter, the po-
lice arrested respondent, who told them that although he
could not remember much about the murders due to severe
intoxication, he did recall stabbing and raping Mesner.

The State proceeded against respondent for both murders
on a felony-murder theory. Under Nebraska law, felony
murder is a form of ﬁrst-degree murder and is deﬁned as
murder committed “in the perpetration of or attempt to per-
petrate” certain enumerated felonies, including sexual as-
sault or attempt to commit sexual assault in the ﬁrst degree.
Neb. Rev. Stat. § 28–303 (1995). When proceeding on such a
theory, Nebraska prosecutors do not need to prove a culpable
mental state with respect to the murder because intent to
kill is conclusively presumed if the State proves intent to