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Syllabus
by cases such as In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, but rather that the instructions prevented the jury from considering evidence of an affirmative defense. Cases following Cupp in the Winship line establish that States must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt with respect to every element of the offense charged, but may place on defendants the burden of proving affirmative defenses, see Martin v. Ohio, 480 U. S. 228; Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, and, thus, make clear that Cupp is an unlikely progenitor of the Falconer rule. Nor do the other cases cited by the Court of Appeals dictate the Falconer result. Boyde, supra—in which the Court clarified the standard for reviewing on habeas a claim that ambiguous instructions impermissibly restricted a jury's consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence—was a capital case, with respect to which the Eighth Amendment requires a greater degree of accuracy and factfinding than in noncapital cases. In contrast, in noncapital cases, instructions containing state-law errors may not form the basis for federal habeas relief, Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, and there is no counterpart to the Eighth Amendment's doctrine of constitutionally relevant evidence in capital cases. Connecticut v. Johnson, supra, and Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510, which it discusses, flow from Winship's due process guarantee, which does not apply to affirmative defenses. The jury's failure to consider Taylor's affirmative defense is not a violation of his due process right to present a complete defense, since the cases involving that right have dealt only with the exclusion of evidence and the testimony of defense witnesses, and since Taylor's expansive reading of these cases would nullify the rule reaffirmed in Estelle v. McGuire, supra. Pp. 340-344. (c) The Falconer rule does not fall into either of Teague's exceptions. The rule does not "decriminalize" any class of conduct or fall into that small core of rules requiring observance of those procedures that are implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. Pp. 344-346.
954 F. 2d 441, reversed.
Rehnquist, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas, JJ., joined, and in all but n. 3 of which Souter, J., joined. O'Connor, J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, in which White, J., joined, post, p. 346. Blackmun, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which Stevens, J., joined, post, p. 352.
Mark E. Wilson, Assistant Attorney General of Illinois, argued the cause for petitioner. With him on the briefs were Roland W. Burris, Attorney General, Rosalyn B.
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