638
Opinion of the Court
standard is thus better tailored to the nature and purpose of collateral review and more likely to promote the considerations underlying our recent habeas cases. Moreover, because the Kotteakos standard is grounded in the federal harmless-error rule, 28 U. S. C. § 2111, federal courts may turn to an existing body of case law in applying it. Therefore, contrary to the assertion of petitioner, application of the Kotteakos standard on collateral review is unlikely to confuse matters for habeas courts.
For the foregoing reasons, then, we hold that the Kotteakos harmless-error standard applies in determining whether habeas relief must be granted because of constitutional error of the trial type.9 All that remains to be decided is whether petitioner is entitled to relief under this standard based on the State's Doyle error. Because the Court of Appeals applied the Kotteakos standard below, we proceed to this question ourselves rather than remand the case for a new harmless-error determination. Cf. Yates v. Evatt, 500 U. S. 391, 407 (1991). At trial, petitioner admitted shooting Hartman, but claimed it was an accident. The principal question before the jury, therefore, was whether the State met its burden in proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the shooting was intentional. Our inquiry here is whether, in light of the record as a whole, the State's improper use for impeachment purposes of petitioner's post-Miranda silence, see n. 2, supra, "had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." We think it clear that it did not.
9 Our holding does not foreclose the possibility that in an unusual case, a deliberate and especially egregious error of the trial type, or one that is combined with a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct, might so infect the integrity of the proceeding as to warrant the grant of habeas relief, even if it did not substantially influence the jury's verdict. Cf. Greer v. Miller, 483 U. S. 756, 769 (1987) (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment). We, of course, are not presented with such a situation here.
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