514
Opinion of the Court
right to determine both law and fact as expressions of "the principle, that when the question is compounded of law and fact, a general verdict, ex necessitate, disposes of the case in hand, both as to law and fact." Id., at 90 (emphasis in original). He gave as an example the 1807 treason trial of Aaron Burr in which Chief Justice Marshall charged the jury that " 'levying war is an act compounded of law and fact; of which the jury, aided by the court must judge. . . . [And] hav[ing] now heard the opinion of the court on the law of the case[,] [t]hey will apply that law to the facts, and will find a verdict of guilty or not guilty as their own consciences may direct.' " Id., at 67 (quoting 2 Burr's Trial 548, 550 (D. Robertson ed. 1875)) (emphasis in original). Other expressions of the same principle abound. See United States v. Battiste, 24 F. Cas. 1042, 1043 (No. 14,545) (CC Mass. 1835) (Story, J., sitting as Circuit Justice) (the jury's general verdict is "necessarily compounded of [both] law and fact"). As Thayer wrote at the end of the 19th century: "From the beginning . . . it was perceived that any general verdict, such as . . . not guilty, involved a conclusion of law, and that the jury did, in a sense, in such cases answer a question of law." Thayer, supra, at 253.
The more modern authorities the Government cites also do not support its concept of the criminal jury as mere fact-finder. Although each contains language discussing the jury's role as factfinder, see Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. 275 (1993); Court of Ulster Cty. v. Allen, 442 U. S. 140, 156 (1979); Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 206 (1977); In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970), each also confirms that the jury's constitutional responsibility is not merely to determine the facts, but to apply the law to those facts and draw the ultimate conclusion of guilt or innocence. The point is put with unmistakable clarity in Allen, which involved the constitutionality of statutory inferences and presumptions. Such devices, Allen said, can help
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