Cite as: 528 U. S. 225 (2000)
Stevens, J., dissenting
ante, at 234-236, and then presumes that the jury must have understood the judge's answer because it did not repeat its question after re-reading the relevant paragraph, and continued to deliberate for another two hours. But if the jurors found it necessary to ask the judge what that paragraph meant in the first place, why should we presume that they would find it any less ambiguous just because the judge told them to read it again? It seems to me far more likely that the reason they did not ask the same question a second time is that the jury believed that it would be disrespectful to repeat a simple, unambiguous question that the judge had already refused to answer directly. The fact that it had previously asked the judge a different question—also related to the effect of a sentencing decision, App. 217—that he had also refused to answer would surely have tended to discourage a repetition of the question about the meaning of his instructions.4
By the Court's logic, a rather exceptionally assertive jury would have to question the judge at least twice and maybe more on precisely the same topic before one could find it no more than "reasonably likely" that the jury was confused.5
4 The Court relies on Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Armstrong v. Toler, 11 Wheat. 258, 279 (1826), as support for its presumption that the jury's failure to repeat its question indicates that it understood the judge's answer. In that case, however, it was the jury's question that was arguably unclear; the Court merely assumed that "the jury could not have intended to put a question which had been already answered." In this case, in contrast, there is no mystery about what the jury wanted to know; the mystery is why the trial judge was unable or unwilling to give it a direct answer.
5 The Court seeks to justify its reliance on the improbable presumption that the jury correctly deciphered the judge's ambiguous answer to its straightforward question by pronouncing: "To presume otherwise would require reversal every time a jury inquires about a matter of constitutional significance, regardless of the judge's answer." Ante, at 234. For two obvious reasons that is not so. First, a simple, direct answer to the jury's question would have avoided the error. Second, clearly established law
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