Cite as: 511 U. S. 1 (1994)
Opinion of Blackmun, J.
that the phrases "actual substantial doubt" and "grave uncertainty" suggested a "higher degree of doubt than is required for acquittal under the reasonable-doubt standard," and that those phrases taken together with the reference to "moral certainty," rather than "evidentiary certainty," rendered the instruction as a whole constitutionally defective. Id., at 41.
Clarence Victor, petitioner in No. 92-8894, also was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. The instruction in his case reads as follows:
" 'Reasonable doubt' is such a doubt as would cause a reasonable and prudent person, in one of the graver and more important transactions of life, to pause and hesitate before taking the represented facts as true and relying and acting thereon. It is such a doubt as will not permit you, after full, fair, and impartial consideration of all the evidence, to have an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the guilt of the accused. At the same time absolute or mathematical certainty is not required. You may be convinced of the truth of a fact beyond a reasonable doubt and yet be fully aware that possibly you may be mistaken. You may find an accused guilty upon the strong probabilities of the case, provided such probabilities are strong enough to exclude any doubt of his guilt that is reasonable. A reasonable doubt is an actual and substantial doubt reasonably arising from the evidence, from the facts or circumstances shown by the evidence, or from the lack of evidence on the part of the State, as distinguished from a doubt arising from mere possibility, from bare imagination, or from fanciful conjecture." App. in No. 92-8894, p. 11 (emphases added).
The majority's attempt to distinguish this instruction from the one employed in Cage is wholly unpersuasive. Both instructions equate "substantial doubt" with reasonable doubt,
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