1. The defendant was convicted of second-degree murder after he shot a man who approached him aggressively in a parking lot. This factual situation presented a question of whether the defendant was instead guilty only of the lesser included offense of voluntary manslaughter as having acted in a state of passion produced by adequate provocation. The jury instructions allowed a verdict of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder only if it was proven, beyond a reasonable doubt, that he had acted in a state of passion.

The first question presented is:

Did these instructions, which imposed on the defendant a burden of proving his innocence of second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt, violate due process under In re Winship, 397 U.S. 358 (1970), Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684 (1975), and Patterson v. New York, 432 U.S. 197, 214 (1977)? In particular, these instructions shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defendant on an issue which the State has been historically required to prove, and imposes a beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard. Does this reversal of burdens cross the "constitutional limits beyond which the States may not go" mentioned, but left undefined, in Patterson?

2. The trial court instructed the jury that second degree murder had two elements, and that voluntary manslaughter had those same two elements plus an additional element (state of passion). It instructed the jury that voluntary manslaughter was a lesser offense of second-degree murder. It also instructed the jury that it could consider a lesser-included offense only if it unanimously acquitted on the greater offense. Together, these instructions if followed meant that the jury could never correctly return a verdict of voluntary manslaughter; if it found the first two elements it would return a murder verdict and if it did not find them it could not convict on manslaughter either.

The second question presented is:

Did these instructions, which if followed exactly ruled out any possibility of a conviction for voluntary manslaughter, violate the defendant's right to a fair trial and right to present a defense?

Did the jury instructions imposing a burden of proving innocence of second-degree murder beyond a reasonable doubt violate due process precedents