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Opinion of the Court
ceedings." 520 U. S., at 467 (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Olano, supra, at 732).
The Government concedes that the indictment's failure to allege a fact, drug quantity, that increased the statutory maximum sentence rendered respondents' enhanced sentences erroneous under the reasoning of Apprendi and Jones. The Government also concedes that such error was plain. See Johnson, supra, at 468 ("[W]here the law at the time of trial was settled and clearly contrary to the law at the time of appeal[,] it is enough that an error be 'plain' at the time of appellate consideration").
The third inquiry is whether the plain error "affect[ed] substantial rights." This usually means that the error "must have affected the outcome of the district court proceedings." Olano, supra, at 734. Respondents argue that an indictment error falls within the "limited class" of "structural errors," Johnson, supra, at 468-469, that "can be corrected regardless of their effect on the outcome," Olano, supra, at 735. Respondents cite Silber v. United States, 370 U. S. 717 (1962) (per curiam), and Stirone v. United States, supra, in support of this position.2 The Government counters by noting that Johnson's list of structural errors did not include Stirone or Silber, see 520 U. S., at 468-469, and that the defendants in both of these cases preserved their claims at trial.
As in Johnson (see id., at 469), we need not resolve whether respondents satisfy this element of the plain-error inquiry, because even assuming respondents' substantial rights were affected, the error did not seriously affect the
2 Respondents also argue that even if the indictment defect is not structural error, it did affect their substantial rights because they were sentenced to more than the 20-year maximum that § 841(b) authorizes without regard to drug quantity. The Government responds that the defendants had notice that their sentences could exceed 20 years, and that the grand jury would have found that the conspiracy involved at least 50 grams of cocaine base had the Government sought such an allegation.
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