Cite as: 527 U. S. 373 (1999)
Ginsburg, J., dissenting
ibid.12 The jury deliberated for a day and a half before returning a verdict recommending death.
Jones moved for a new trial on the ground, supported by postsentence juror statements, that the court's instructions had misled the jurors. Specifically, Jones urged that the charge led jurors to believe that a deadlock would result in a court-imposed lesser sentence; to avoid such an outcome, Jones asserted, jurors who favored life without possibility of release changed their votes to approve the death verdict. See App. 60-68, 75-80. The vote change, Jones maintained, was not hypothetical; it was backed up by juror statements. See id., at 68, 79. The District Court denied the new trial motion. Id., at 74, 81.
The Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed the death sentence. The appeals court ruled first that the District Court correctly refused to instruct that a jury deadlock would yield a court-imposed sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of release. 132 F. 3d, at 242-243. Jury deadlock under the FDPA, the Fifth Circuit stated, would not occasion an automatic life sentence; instead, that court declared, deadlock would necessitate a second sentencing hearing before a newly impaneled jury. Id., at 243. The Court of Appeals further observed that, "[a]lthough the use of instructions to inform the jury of the consequences of a hung jury ha[s] been affirmed, federal courts have never been affirmatively required to give such instructions." Id., at 245.
Next, the appeals court determined that the instructions, read in their entirety, "could not have led a reasonable jury to conclude that non-unanimity would result in the imposi-12 One or more jurors found each of Jones's ten specific mitigating factors. None found the eleventh, a catchall stating that "other factors in the defendant's background or character militate against the death penalty," see 18 U. S. C. § 3592(a)(8), but seven found the existence of an additional mitigating factor not submitted by Jones. See 132 F. 3d, at 238-239, n. 3.
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