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Opinion of the Court
tion had been described by the Ramos majority opinion and Justice O’Connor's concurrence in Caldwell as a "policy choice" left to the States, the reasonable jurist may well have concluded that the most surely constitutional course, when confronted with a request to inform a jury about a defendant's parole eligibility, was silence.
Teague asks state-court judges to judge reasonably, not presciently. See Stringer v. Black, 503 U. S., at 244 (Souter, J., dissenting). In Simmons, the Court carved out an exception to the general rule described in Ramos by, for the first time ever, requiring that a defendant be allowed to inform the jury of postsentencing legal eventualities. A 1988 jurist's failure to predict this cannot, we think, be deemed unreasonable. Accordingly, the rule announced in Simmons was new, and petitioner may not avail himself of it unless the rule of Simmons falls within one of the exceptions to Teague's bar.3
3 Our conclusion that the rule of Simmons was new finds support in the decisions of the state courts and the lower federal courts. See Butler, 494 U. S., at 415. By 1988, no state or federal court had adopted the rule of Simmons. In fact, both before and after Skipper v. South Carolina, 476 U. S. 1 (1986), several courts had upheld against constitutional challenge practices similar, if not identical, to that later forbidden in Simmons. See, e. g., Turner v. Bass, 753 F. 2d 342, 354 (CA4 1985), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. Turner v. Murray, 476 U. S. 28 (1986); O'Bryan v. Estelle, 714 F. 2d 365, 389 (CA5 1983), cert. denied sub nom. O'Bryan v. McKaskle, 465 U. S. 1013 (1984); King v. Lynaugh, 850 F. 2d 1055, 1057 (CA5 1988) (en banc), cert. denied, 488 U. S. 1019 (1989); Peterson v. Murray, 904 F. 2d 882, 886-887 (CA4), cert. denied, 498 U. S. 992 (1990); Knox v. Collins, 928 F. 2d 657, 660, 662 (CA5 1991); see also Turner v. Commonwealth, 234 Va. 543, 551-552, 364 S. E. 2d 483, 487-488, cert. denied, 486 U. S. 1017 (1988); Mueller v. Commonwealth, 244 Va. 386, 408-409, 422 S. E. 2d 380, 394 (1992), cert. denied, 507 U. S. 1043 (1993). In addition, several of the courts to consider the question have, along with the Fourth Circuit in this case, concluded that the rule of Simmons was new. See, e. g., Johnson v. Scott, 68 F. 3d 106, 111-112, n. 11 (CA5 1995), cert. denied sub nom. Johnson v. Johnson, 517 U. S. 1122 (1996); Mueller v. Murray, 252 Va. 356, 365-366, 478 S. E. 2d 542, 548 (1996); Commonwealth v.
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