Cite as: 532 U. S. 782 (2001)
Opinion of the Court
tion to operate in this way, the instruction was not as simple to implement as the State contends. Rather, it made the jury charge as a whole internally contradictory, and placed law-abiding jurors in an impossible situation.
The jury was clearly instructed that a "yes" answer to a special issue was appropriate only when supported "by the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt." App. 672. A "no" answer was appropriate only when there was "a reasonable doubt as to whether the answer to a Special Issue should be . . . 'Yes.'" Id., at 673. The verdict form listed the three special issues and, with no mention of mitigating circumstances, confirmed and clarified the jury's two choices with respect to each special issue. The jury could swear that it had unanimously determined "beyond a reasonable doubt that the answer to this Special Issue is 'Yes.' " Id., at 676-678. Or it could swear that at least 10 jurors had "a reasonable doubt as to the matter inquired about in this Special Issue" and that the jury thus had "determin[ed] that the answer to this Special Issue is 'No.' " Ibid. (emphasis added).
In the State's view, however, the jury was also told that it could ignore these clear guidelines and—even if there was in fact no reasonable doubt as to the matter inquired about— answer any special issue in the negative if the mitigating circumstances warranted a life sentence. In other words, the jury could change one or more truthful "yes" answers to an untruthful "no" answer in order to avoid a death sentence for Penry.
We generally presume that jurors follow their instructions. See, e. g., Richardson v. Marsh, 481 U. S. 200, 211 (1987). Here, however, it would have been both logically and ethically impossible for a juror to follow both sets of instructions. Because Penry's mitigating evidence did not fit within the scope of the special issues, answering those issues in the manner prescribed on the verdict form necessarily meant ignoring the command of the supplemental in-
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