278
Opinion of the Court
fense charged, see, e. g., Patterson v. New York, 432 U. S. 197, 210 (1977); Leland v. Oregon, 343 U. S. 790, 795 (1952), and must persuade the factfinder "beyond a reasonable doubt" of the facts necessary to establish each of those elements, see, e. g., In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, 364 (1970); Cool v. United States, 409 U. S. 100, 104 (1972) (per curiam). This beyond-a-reasonable-doubt requirement, which was adhered to by virtually all common-law jurisdictions, applies in state as well as federal proceedings. Winship, supra.
It is self-evident, we think, that the Fifth Amendment requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the Sixth Amendment requirement of a jury verdict are interrelated. It would not satisfy the Sixth Amendment to have a jury determine that the defendant is probably guilty, and then leave it up to the judge to determine (as Winship requires) whether he is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. In other words, the jury verdict required by the Sixth Amendment is a jury verdict of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Our per curiam opinion in Cage, which we accept as controlling, held that an instruction of the sort given here does not produce such a verdict.* Petitioner's Sixth Amendment right to jury trial was therefore denied.
III
In Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967), we rejected the view that all federal constitutional errors in the course of a criminal trial require reversal. We held that the
*The State has argued in this Court that the Cage standard for review of jury instructions, which looked to whether a jury "could have" applied the instructions in a manner inconsistent with the Constitution, was contradicted in Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 380 (1990), and disapproved in Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62, 72-73, n. 4 (1991). In view of the question presented and the State's failure to raise this issue below, we do not consider whether the instruction given here would survive review under the Boyde standard. See Granfinanciera, S. A. v. Nordberg, 492 U. S. 33, 38-39 (1989); Washington v. Confederated Bands and Tribes of Yakima Nation, 439 U. S. 463, 476, n. 20 (1979).
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