Cite as: 530 U. S. 466 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
sumption of murderous intent did not implicate Winship protections because, upon conviction of either offense, the defendant would lose his liberty and face societal stigma just the same. Rejecting this argument, we acknowledged that criminal law "is concerned not only with guilt or innocence in the abstract, but also with the degree of criminal culpability" assessed. 421 U. S., at 697-698. Because the "consequences" of a guilty verdict for murder and for manslaughter differed substantially, we dismissed the possibility that a State could circumvent the protections of Winship merely by "redefin[ing] the elements that constitute different crimes, characterizing them as factors that bear solely on the extent of punishment." 421 U. S., at 698.12
IV
It was in McMillan v. Pennsylvania, 477 U. S. 79 (1986), that this Court, for the first time, coined the term "sentencing factor" to refer to a fact that was not found by a jury but that could affect the sentence imposed by the judge. That case involved a challenge to the State's Man-12 Contrary to the principal dissent's suggestion, post, at 530-532, Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 198 (1977), posed no direct challenge to this aspect of Mullaney. In upholding a New York law allowing defendants to raise and prove extreme emotional distress as an affirmative defense to murder, Patterson made clear that the state law still required the State to prove every element of that State's offense of murder and its accompanying punishment. "No further facts are either presumed or inferred in order to constitute the crime." 432 U. S., at 205-206. New York, unlike Maine, had not made malice aforethought, or any described mens rea, part of its statutory definition of second-degree murder; one could tell from the face of the statute that if one intended to cause the death of another person and did cause that death, one could be subject to sentence for a second-degree offense. Id., at 198. Responding to the argument that our view could be seen "to permit state legislatures to reallocate burdens of proof by labeling as affirmative defenses at least some elements of the crimes now defined in their statutes," the Court made clear in the very next breath that there were "obviously constitutional limits beyond which the States may not go in this regard." Id., at 210.
485
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