378
Opinion of the Court
object a second time, specifically to the jury instructions." Ibid. In other words, although we did not doubt the general applicability of the Ohio Rule of Criminal Procedure requiring contemporaneous objection to jury charges, we nevertheless concluded that, in this atypical instance, the Rule would serve "no perceivable state interest." Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).
Our decision, we added in Osborne, followed from "the general principle that an objection which is ample and timely to bring the alleged federal error to the attention of the trial court and enable it to take appropriate corrective action is sufficient to serve legitimate state interests, and therefore sufficient to preserve the claim for review here." Id., at 125 (quoting Douglas, 380 U. S., at 422 (internal quotation marks omitted)). This general principle, and the unusual "sequence of events" before us—rapidly unfolding events that Lee and his counsel could not have foreseen, and for which they were not at all responsible—similarly guide our judgment in this case.
The dissent strives mightily to distinguish Osborne, an opinion Justices Kennedy and Scalia joined, but cannot do so convincingly. In an intricate discussion of Osborne longer than the relevant section of Osborne itself, the dissent crafts its own rationales for the decision and sweeps away language its design cannot accommodate as "unnecessary" and "in tension" with the rest of the Court's analysis, post, at 399.
As attentive reading of the relevant pages of Osborne will confirm, 495 U. S., at 123-125, we here rely not on "isolated statements" from the opinion, post, at 396, but solidly on its analysis and holding on "the adequacy of state procedural bars to the assertion of federal questions." 495 U. S., at 125 (quoting Douglas, 380 U. S., at 422 (internal quotation marks omitted)).
According to the dissent in this case, Osborne's discrete section trained on the adequacy of state-law grounds to bar
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