390
Opinion of the Court
sentence—falls short of satisfying even the first requirement of the plain-error doctrine, for we cannot see that any error occurred. We have considered similar claims that allegedly ambiguous instructions caused jury confusion. See, e. g., Victor v. Nebraska, 511 U. S. 1 (1994); Estelle v. McGuire, 502 U. S. 62 (1991); Boyde v. California, 494 U. S. 370 (1990). The proper standard for reviewing such claims is " 'whether there is a reasonable likelihood that the jury has applied the challenged instruction in a way' that violates the Constitution." Estelle, supra, at 72 (quoting Boyde, supra, at 380); see also Victor, supra, at 6 (applying reasonable likelihood standard to direct review of state criminal conviction).9
There is no reasonable likelihood that the jury applied the instructions incorrectly. The District Court did not expressly inform the jury that it would impose a lesser sentence in case of deadlock. It simply told the jury that, if it recommended a lesser sentence, the court would impose a sentence "authorized by the law." App. 44. Nor did the District Court expressly require the jury to select Decision Form D if it could not reach agreement. Instead, it exhorted the jury "to discuss the issue of punishment with one
9 Petitioner concedes that the Boyde standard applies to the extent that he is advancing a constitutional claim, but relying on our prior decision in Andres v. United States, 333 U. S. 740, 752 (1948), he contends that a more lenient standard applies to the extent that he seeks relief under the statute directly. Our decisions in Boyde and Estelle, however, foreclose that reading of Andres. In Boyde we noted that our prior decisions, including Andres, had been "less than clear" in articulating a single workable standard for evaluating claims that an instruction prevented the jury's consideration of constitutionally relevant evidence. 494 U. S., at 378. In order to supply "a single formulation for this Court and other courts to employ in deciding this kind of federal question," we announced the "reasonable likelihood" standard. Id., at 379. We made this same point later in Estelle, noting that "[i]n Boyde . . . we made it a point to settle on a single standard of review for jury instructions—the 'reasonable likelihood' stand-ard—after considering the many different phrasings that had previously been used by this Court." 502 U. S., at 72-73, n. 4.
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