Page:United States Reports 546.pdf/288

 546US1

Unit: $$U9

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Cite as: 546 U. S. 74 (2005)

77

Per Curiam

evant statute forbade, see id., at 351. And it is further doubtful whether the doctrine of constitutional doubt per­ mits such a ﬂatly countertextual interpretation of what the Ohio Supreme Court said, see Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52, 59–60 (1997). But assuming all that, Ohio law at the time of respondent’s offense provided fully adequate notice of the applicability of transferred intent. The rele­ vant mens rea provision in § 2903.01(D) required only that “[n]o person shall be convicted of aggravated murder unless he is speciﬁcally found to have intended to cause the death of another.” Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2903.01(D) (Anderson 1982) (emphasis added). Respondent’s intention to kill his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend plainly came within this pro­ vision. There was no reason to read “another” (countertex­ tually) as meaning only “the actual victim,” since the doc­ trine of transferred intent was “ﬁrmly rooted in Ohio law.” State v. Sowell, 39 Ohio St. 3d 322, 332, 530 N. E. 2d 1294, 1305 (1988) (citing Wareham v. State, 25 Ohio St. 601 (1874)). Respondent could not plausibly claim unfair surprise that the doctrine applied in his case. See Lanier, supra, at 269–270 (requiring, as adequate notice for due process purposes, only “reasonable warning,” rather than fundamentally similar prior cases). The foregoing provision was in effect at the time of re­ spondent’s crime in 1986. The Sixth Circuit reasoned, how­ ever, that the following subsequent clause in the version of § 2903.01(D) that existed in 1986 foreclosed transferred intent in this case: “If a jury in an aggravated murder case is instructed that a person who commits or attempts to commit any offense listed in division (B) of this section may be in­ ferred, because he engaged in a common design with others to commit the offense by force or violence or be­ cause the offense and the manner of its commission would be likely to produce death, to have intended to