144
Per Curiam
147. Under the California Constitution, the Governor may not commute the sentence of a prisoner who, like Coleman, is a twice-convicted felon without the approval of four judges of the California Supreme Court. Art. 5, § 8.
The District Court found that, because the Briggs instruction did not mention this limitation on the Governor's commutation power, it violated the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments by "g[iving] the jury inaccurate information and potentially divert[ing] its attention from the mitigation evidence presented." No. C89-1906, supra, at A-151. The court also found that, in the context of the case—particularly, the prosecutor's arguments of future dangerousness, "the commutation instruction would likely have prevented the jury from giving due effect to Coleman's mitigating evidence." Id., at A-149. The court did not in express terms consider the effect of the additional instruction, which instructed the jury not to consider commutation, but it noted that the Ninth Circuit had held in a similar case, Hamilton v. Vasquez, 17 F. 3d 1149 (1994), "that the trial court did not cure the error by instructing the jury not to consider commutation." No. C89-1906, supra, at A-148.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court's grant of the writ as to Coleman's sentence. 150 F. 3d 1105 (1998). The Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court's finding that the instruction, as applied to Coleman, gave the jury inaccurate information about the Governor's commutation power. Id., at 1118. And, in a sweeping pronouncement, the court declared, "[a] commutation instruction is unconstitutional when it is inaccurate." Ibid. The instruction at issue was fatally flawed, the court held, because it "dramatically overstate[d] the possibility of commuting the life sentence of a person such as Coleman" (by creating "the false impression that the Governor, acting alone," could commute the sentence) and thus prevented the jurors from "understand[ing] the choice they [we]re asked to make" and " 'invited [them] to speculate' that Cole-
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