Cite as: 528 U. S. 225 (2000)
Opinion of the Court
his punishment at death . . . ." Id., at 225 (emphasis added).
The jurors were polled and all responded affirmatively that the foregoing was their verdict in the case.
Petitioner presented 47 assignments of error in his direct appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court, and the assignment of error respecting the judge's answering the jury's question about mitigating circumstances was number 44. The Virginia Supreme Court affirmed petitioner's conviction and sentence, holding that the claims petitioner advances here lack merit. Weeks v. Virginia, 248 Va. 460, 465-466, 476- 477, 450 S. E. 2d 379, 383, 390 (1994), cert. denied, 516 U. S. 829 (1995). The Virginia Supreme Court dismissed petition-er's state habeas petition as jurisdictionally barred on timeliness grounds. The District Court denied petitioner's request for federal habeas relief, and the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied a certificate of appealability and dismissed his petition. 176 F. 3d 249 (1999). We granted certiorari, 527 U. S. 1060 (1999), and now affirm.
Petitioner relies heavily on our decisions in Bollenbach v. United States, 326 U. S. 607 (1946), and Eddings v. Oklahoma, 455 U. S. 104 (1982). Bollenbach involved a supplemental instruction by the trial court following an inquiry from the jury—in that respect it is like the present case— but the instruction given by the trial court in Bollenbach was palpably erroneous. 326 U. S., at 611. In this respect it is quite unlike the present case. Eddings arose out of a bench trial in a capital case, and this Court reversed a sentence of death because the trial judge had refused to consider mitigating evidence: "[I]t was as if the trial judge had instructed a jury to disregard the mitigating evidence Eddings proffered on his behalf." 455 U. S., at 114.
Here the trial judge gave no such instruction. On the contrary, he gave the instruction that we upheld in Buchanan v. Angelone, 522 U. S. 269 (1998), as being sufficient to allow the jury to consider mitigating evidence. And in
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