28
Opinion of Blackmun, J.
sonable doubt standard. See ante, at 6. On that understanding, I join Parts II, III-B, and IV of the Court's opinion and concur in its judgment.
Justice Blackmun, with whom Justice Souter joins in all but Part II, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
In Cage v. Louisiana, 498 U. S. 39 (1990), this Court, by a per curiam opinion, found a jury instruction defining reasonable doubt so obviously flawed that the resulting state-court judgment deserved summary reversal. The majority today purports to uphold and follow Cage, but plainly falters in its application of that case. There is no meaningful difference between the jury instruction delivered at Victor's trial and the jury instruction issued in Cage, save the fact that the jury instruction in Victor's case did not contain the two words "grave uncertainty." But the mere absence of these two words can be of no help to the State, since there is other language in the instruction that is equally offensive to due process. I therefore dissent from the Court's opinion and judgment in No. 92-8894, Victor v. Nebraska.
I
Our democracy rests in no small part on our faith in the ability of the criminal justice system to separate those who are guilty from those who are not. This is a faith which springs fundamentally from the requirement that unless guilt is established beyond all reasonable doubt, the accused shall go free. It was not until 1970, however, in In re Winship, 397 U. S. 358, that the Court finally and explicitly held that "the Due Process Clause protects the accused against conviction except upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt of every fact necessary to constitute the crime with which he is charged." Id., at 364. In Winship, the Court recounted the long history of the reasonable-doubt standard, noting that it "dates at least from our early years as a Na-
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