Lincoln Isaac v. Ted Engle, Superintendent

BAILEY BROWN, Circuit Judge.

In this appeal, we are confronted with the difficult task of determining the federal constitutional consequence, if any, of two decisions by the Supreme Court of Ohio. One of these decisions for the first time construed, an Ohio statute to place the burden on the state in criminal cases of proving the absence of affirmative defenses, and the other decision held that only those defendants who had objected at the trial to jury instructions placing the burden on defendant to prove an affirmative defense could avail themselves on appeal of this interpretation of the…