Cite as: 511 U. S. 1 (1994)
Opinion of the Court
any reference to moral certainty. See Federal Judicial Center, Pattern Criminal Jury Instructions 28 (1988); 1 E. Devitt & C. Blackmar, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions § 11.14 (3d ed. 1977). But we have no supervisory power over the state courts, and in the context of the instructions as a whole we cannot say that the use of the phrase rendered the instruction given in Sandoval's case unconstitutional.
B
Finally, Sandoval objects to the portion of the charge in which the judge instructed the jury that a reasonable doubt is "not a mere possible doubt." The Cage instruction included an almost identical reference to "not a mere possible doubt," but we did not intimate that there was anything wrong with that part of the charge. See 498 U. S., at 40. That is because "[a] 'reasonable doubt,' at a minimum, is one based upon 'reason.' " Jackson v. Virginia, supra, at 317. A fanciful doubt is not a reasonable doubt. As Sandoval's defense attorney told the jury: "Anything can be possible . . . . [A] planet could be made out of blue cheese. But that's really not in the realm of what we're talking about." Sandoval App. 79 (excerpt from closing argument). That this is the sense in which the instruction uses "possible" is made clear from the final phrase of the sentence, which notes that everything "is open to some possible or imaginary doubt." We therefore reject Sandoval's challenge to this portion of the instruction as well.
III
On December 26, 1987, petitioner Victor went to the Omaha home of an 82-year-old woman for whom he occasionally did gardening work. Once inside, he beat her with a pipe and cut her throat with a knife, killing her. Victor was convicted of first degree murder. A three-judge panel found the statutory aggravating circumstances that Victor had previously been convicted of murder, Neb. Rev. Stat. § 29- 2523(1)(a) (1989), and that the murder in this case was espe-
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