576
Opinion of the Court
were forced to rely on the willingness of state authorities to institute civil commitment proceedings. Reliance on state cooperation was "at best a partial solution to a serious problem," however, and federal courts "[t]ime and again . . . de-cried this gaping statutory hole." McCracken, supra, at 417.
Before the IDRA was enacted, the Federal Courts of Appeals generally disapproved of instructing the jury concerning the post-trial consequences of an insanity acquittal. Thus, jurors typically were given no information with regard to what would happen to a defendant acquitted by reason of insanity. The courts in general gave two reasons for disapproving such instructions. First, they pointed out that, given the absence of a federal commitment procedure, the consequences of an insanity acquittal were far from certain. Second, they concluded that such instructions would run afoul of the well-established principle that a jury is to base its verdict on the evidence before it, without regard to the possible consequences of the verdict. See, e. g., McCracken, supra, at 423; Evalt, supra, at 546; United States v. Borum, 464 F. 2d 896, 900-901 (CA10 1972).
The only Court of Appeals to endorse the practice of instructing the jury regarding the consequences of an insanity acquittal was the District of Columbia Circuit. See Lyles v. United States, 254 F. 2d 725 (1957) (en banc), cert. denied, 356 U. S. 961 (1958). In Lyles, the District of Columbia Circuit addressed the jury instruction question in the context of D. C. Code Ann. § 24-301 (1951 ed., Supp. V), which, unlike generally applicable federal law, provided for a special verdict of NGI and, as noted above, a civil commitment procedure. The Lyles court recognized the "well established and sound" doctrine "that the jury has no concern with the consequences" of a verdict, but stated that the doctrine "d[id] not apply" to the situation before it. 254 F. 2d, at 728. According to the court, although jurors generally were "aware of the meanings of verdicts of guilty and not guilty," they
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