Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt The Court further reasoned: [T]he essential connection to a ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’ factual finding cannot be made where the instructional error consists of a misdescription of the burden of proof, which vitiates all the jury’s findings. A reviewing court can only engage in pure speculation – its view of what a reasonable jury would have done. And when it does that, ‘the wrong entity judge[s] the defendant guilty.’458 The Court recalled the distinction between structural errors, being “structural defects in the constitution of the trial mechanism, which defy analysis,” and harmless errors, “which may be quantitatively assessed in the context of other evidence presented.”459 Thus, the Court held that the deprivation of the right to a jury verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt “with consequences that are necessarily unquantifiable and indeterminate, unquestionably qualifies as structural error.”460 Victor v. Nebraska (1994) The US Supreme Court revisited the issue of faulty jury instructions in Victor. However, it did not take the opportunity to provide a clear definition of the reasonable doubt standard. Victor concerned two separate actions: the petitioners in State v. Victor461 and People v. Sandoval462 were individually convicted of murder and sentenced to death, and appealed the constitutionality of their respective jury instructions defining reasonable doubt. Sandoval had been convicted of a double homicide.463 In his case, the jury was instructed: Reasonable doubt is defined as follows: It is not a mere possible doubt; because everything relating to human affairs, and depending on moral evidence, is open to some possible or imaginary doubt. It is that state of the case which, after the entire comparison and consideration of all the evidence, leaves the minds of the jurors in that condition that they cannot say they feel an abiding conviction, to a moral certainty, of the truth of the charge.464 Victor was convicted of first-degree murder. Similar instructions were given to the jury in his trial: “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 Sullivan, at 279. Sullivan, at 281, citing Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U.S. 279, 309 (1991). 460 Sullivan, at 281-82. 461 State v. Victor, 235 Neb. 770 (1990). 462 People v. Sandoval, 4 Cal. 4th 155 (1992). 463 Victor, at 7. 464 Victor, at 7 (italics in original). 458 459 104