Stevie Cole v. Warren Young, Superintendent and the Attorney General of the State of Wisconsin

WILL, Senior District Judge.

This appeal from the district court’s denial of appellant Stevie Cole’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus involves two relatively straight-forward questions: (1) whether at the time of Cole’s offense Wisconsin law required proof of “great bodily harm” to support a mayhem conviction and, if it did, (2) whether federal law protects a criminal defendant from conviction by a jury that has received no instruction on an essential element of the crime charged. Based on the decisions of the Wisconsin appellate courts, we find that at the time Cole committed the acts in…