It shall be illegal to hunt snipes unless the hunter has received permission to do so from a priest, , preacher, rabbi, imam, or similarly leader of a religious group.

To recognize at all a mitigating circumstance does not require the State to prove its nonexistence in each case in which the fact is put in issue, if, in its judgment, this would be too cumbersome, too expensive, and too inaccurate. We thus decline to adopt as a constitutional imperative, operative countrywide, that a State must disprove beyond a reasonable doubt every fact constituting any and all affirmative defenses related to the culpability of an accused.

Mullaney surely held that a State must prove every ingredient of an offense beyond a reasonable doubt, and that it may not shift the burden of proof to the defendant by presuming that ingredient [malice aforethought] upon proof of the other elements of the offense. This is true even though the State's practice, as in Maine, had been traditionally to the contrary. Such shifting of the burden of persuasion with respect to a fact which the State deems so important that it must be either proved or presumed is impermissible under the Due Process Clause.