Cite as: 535 U. S. 625 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
trict court "has jurisdiction of all crimes cognizable under the authority of the United States . . . [and] [t]he objection that the indictment does not charge a crime against the United States goes only to the merits of the case." Id., at 65. Similarly, United States v. Williams, 341 U. S. 58, 66 (1951), held that a ruling "that the indictment is defective does not affect the jurisdiction of the trial court to determine the case presented by the indictment."
Thus, this Court some time ago departed from Bain's view that indictment defects are "jurisdictional." Bain has been cited in later cases such as Stirone v. United States, 361 U. S. 212 (1960), and Russell v. United States, 369 U. S. 749 (1962), for the proposition that "an indictment may not be amended except by resubmission to the grand jury, unless the change is merely a matter of form," id., at 770 (citing Bain, supra). But in each of these cases proper objection had been made in the District Court to the sufficiency of the indictment. We need not retreat from this settled proposition of law decided in Bain to say that the analysis of that issue in terms of "jurisdiction" was mistaken in the light of later cases such as Lamar and Williams. Insofar as it held that a defective indictment deprives a court of jurisdiction, Bain is overruled.
Freed from the view that indictment omissions deprive a court of jurisdiction, we proceed to apply the plain-error test of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b) to respondents' forfeited claim. See United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 731 (1993). "Under that test, before an appellate court can correct an error not raised at trial, there must be (1) 'error,' (2) that is 'plain,' and (3) that 'affect[s] substantial rights.' " Johnson v. United States, 520 U. S. 461, 466-467 (1997) (quoting Olano, supra, at 732). "If all three conditions are met, an appellate court may then exercise its discretion to notice a forfeited error, but only if (4) the error "seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity, or public reputation of judicial pro-
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