Williams v. State

Summary

The court affirmed Williams’s convictions, holding that the trial court plainly erred by omitting an instruction that the State had to disprove justification beyond a reasonable doubt, but that the omission did not affect his substantial rights. The court also assumed trial counsel may have performed deficiently by failing to investigate additional evidence of the victim’s violent character, but found no reasonable probability that such evidence would have changed the verdict because substantial evidence of the victim’s violent character was already admitted.