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Opinion of the Court
See also Greenleaf, supra, at 4 ("The most that can be affirmed of [things proved by moral evidence] is, that there is no reasonable doubt concerning them").
Thus, when Chief Justice Shaw penned the Webster instruction in 1850, moral certainty meant a state of subjective certitude about some event or occurrence. As the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court subsequently explained:
"Proof 'beyond a reasonable doubt' . . . is proof 'to a moral certainty,' as distinguished from an absolute certainty. As applied to a judicial trial for crime, the two phrases are synonymous and equivalent; each has been used by eminent judges to explain the other; and each signifies such proof as satisfies the judgment and consciences of the jury, as reasonable men, and applying their reason to the evidence before them, that the crime charged has been committed by the defendant, and so satisfies them as to leave no other reasonable conclusion possible." Commonwealth v. Costley, 118 Mass. 1, 24 (1875).
Indeed, we have said that "[p]roof to a 'moral certainty' is an equivalent phrase with 'beyond a reasonable doubt.' " Fidelity Mut. Life Assn. v. Mettler, 185 U. S. 308, 317 (1902), citing Commonwealth v. Costley, supra. See also Wilson v. United States, 232 U. S. 563, 570 (1914) (approving reasonable doubt instruction cast in terms of moral certainty); Miles v. United States, 103 U. S. 304, 309, 312 (1881).
We recognize that the phrase "moral evidence" is not a mainstay of the modern lexicon, though we do not think it means anything different today than it did in the 19th century. The few contemporary dictionaries that define moral evidence do so consistently with its original meaning. See, e. g., Webster's New Twentieth Century Dictionary 1168 (2d ed. 1979) ("based on general observation of people, etc. rather than on what is demonstrable"); Collins English Dic-
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