Court Opinion

ID: 9467843
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 01:57:53.542325+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:33.357421
License: Public Domain

GEORGE CLIFTON EDWARDS, Jr., Chief Judge,
concurring.
New cases in the history of this court have resulted in as much soul-searching thought and debate as has this case. I write to express concurrence in the result reached by Judge Bailey Brown’s opinion for the majority of the en banc court. In my view, however, under In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358, 90 S.Ct. 1068, 25 L.Ed.2d 368 (1970), and Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975), cited with approval and distinguished on the facts in Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 97 S.Ct. 2319, 53 L.Ed.2d 281 (1977), the due process clause of the United States Constitution commands that the burden of proof of criminal intent — clearly an element of Ohio’s aggravated assault law— be placed on the prosecution. Here the burden of proof of self-defense was definitely placed on the defendant. Criminal intent of aggravated assault and self-defense are, in my view, completely irreconcilable. To require a defendant to carry the burden of proof on self-defense is to require him to disprove criminal intent.1
As to the retroactivity and the cause and prejudice issues discussed by the Supreme Court in Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U.S. 72, 97 S.Ct. 2497, 53 L.Ed.2d 594 (1977); see also Hankerson v. North Carolina, 432 U.S. 233, 97 S.Ct. 2339, 53 L.Ed.2d 306 (1977), I join fully in Judge Brown’s careful analysis showing that Isaac is entitled to a new and fair trial.

. A full understanding of this record has convinced me that this case is not a satisfactory medium for decision of the difficulties inherent in the collision between Ohio’s tangled laws pertaining to self-defense and federal due process standards as exemplified in In re Winship, Mullaney v. Wilbur, and Patterson v. New York. A motion to vacate the motion for en banc consideration as improvidently granted has, however, failed.