Cite as: 527 U. S. 1 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
Difficult as such issues would be when dealing with the ample volume defining federal crimes, they would be measurably compounded by the necessity for federal courts, reviewing state convictions under 28 U. S. C. § 2254, to ascertain the elements of the offense as defined in the laws of 50 different States.
It would not be illogical to extend the reasoning of Sullivan from a defective "reasonable doubt" instruction to a failure to instruct on an element of the crime. But, as indicated in the foregoing discussion, the matter is not res nova under our case law. And if the life of the law has not been logic but experience, see O. Holmes, The Common Law 1 (1881), we are entitled to stand back and see what would be accomplished by such an extension in this case. The omitted element was materiality. Petitioner underreported $5 million on his tax returns, and did not contest the element of materiality at trial. Petitioner does not suggest that he would introduce any evidence bearing upon the issue of materiality if so allowed. Reversal without any consideration of the effect of the error upon the verdict would send the case back for retrial—a retrial not focused at all on the issue of materiality, but on contested issues on which the jury was properly instructed. We do not think the Sixth Amendment requires us to veer away from settled precedent to reach such a result.
B
Having concluded that the omission of an element is an error that is subject to harmless-error analysis, the question remains whether Neder's conviction can stand because the error was harmless. In Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967), we set forth the test for determining whether a constitutional error is harmless. That test, we said, is whether it appears "beyond a reasonable doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained." Id., at 24; see Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U. S. 673, 681 (1986) ("[A]n otherwise valid conviction should not
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