242
Stevens, J., dissenting
second paragraph of the instruction quoted above. The fact that the jurors asked this question about that instruction demonstrates beyond peradventure that the instruction had confused them. There would have been no reason to ask the question if they had understood the instruction to authorize a life sentence even though they found that an aggravator had been proved.
Although it would have been easy to do so, the judge did not give the jurors a straightforward categorical answer to their simple question; he merely told them to reexamine the portion of the instructions that they, in effect, had already said they did not understand. The text of their question indicates that they believed that they had a duty "to issue the death penalty" if they believed that "Weeks . . . is guilty of at least 1 of the alternatives." Ibid. Without a simple, clear-cut statement from the judge that that belief was incorrect, there was surely a reasonable likelihood that they would act on that belief.3
Instead of accepting a commonsense interpretation of the colloquy between the jury and the judge, the Court first relies on a presumption that the jury understood the instruction (a presumption surely rebutted by the question itself),
3 The Court suggests this likelihood is impossible in part because, even if the jury were confused by the judge's response, it had not only the text of the instruction but also the benefit of defense counsel's oral argument, in which counsel averred that the jury could award a life sentence even if it found an aggravating factor. See ante, at 236. But this statement by counsel, coming as it did, of course, before the jury began deliberations, apparently did not prevent the jury from asking the question in the first place. Moreover, as this Court wisely noted in Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370, 384 (1990): "[A]rguments of counsel generally carry less weight with a jury than do instructions from the court. The former are usually billed in advance to the jury as matters of argument, not evidence, and are likely viewed as the statements of advocates; the latter, we have often recognized, are viewed as definitive and binding statements of the law." (Citing cases; citation omitted.)
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