Cite as: 527 U. S. 373 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
themselves sufficient to justify a sentence of death where no mitigating factor has been found to exist; or (3) regardless of your findings with respect to aggravating and mitigating factors you are not unanimous in recommending that a sentence of death should be imposed. Decision Form C should be used if you unanimously recommend that a sentence of imprisonment for life without the possibility of release should be imposed.
"Decision Form D should be used if you recommend that some other lesser sentence should be imposed." Id., at 47-48.
Petitioner maintains that the instructions in combination with the decision forms led the jury to believe that if it failed to recommend unanimously a sentence of death or life imprisonment without the possibility of release, then it would be required to use Decision Form D and the court would impose a sentence less than life imprisonment.8 The scope of our review is shaped by whether petitioner properly raised and preserved an objection to the instructions at trial. A party generally may not assign error to a jury instruction if he fails to object before the jury retires or to "stat[e] distinctly the matter to which that party objects and the grounds of the objection." Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 30. These timeliness and specificity requirements apply during the sentencing phase as well as the trial. See 18 U. S. C. § 3595(c)(2)(C); see also Fed. Rules Crim. Proc. 1, 54(a). They enable a trial court to correct any instructional mis-8 Petitioner does not argue that the District Court's instructions on the lesser sentence option, standing alone, constituted reversible error although the parties agree that, after the jury found petitioner guilty of kidnaping resulting in death, the only possible sentences were death and a life sentence. See Brief for Petitioner 18-19; Brief for United States 13, n. 2; see also 18 U. S. C. § 1201. Petitioner made such an argument below; the Fifth Circuit, however, concluded that the instructions as to the lesser sentence option did not rise to the level of plain error. 132 F. 3d, at 246-248.
387
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