Mitchell v. Esparza, 540 U.S. 12, 5 (2003) (per curiam)

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16

MITCHELL v. ESPARZA

Per Curiam

that are materially indistinguishable from a decision of this Court and nevertheless arrives at a result different from our precedent." Williams v. Taylor, 529 U. S. 362, 405-406 (2000); see also Price v. Vincent, 538 U. S. 634, 640 (2003); Early v. Packer, 537 U. S. 3, 7-8 (2002) (per curiam). A state court's decision is not "contrary to . . . clearly established Federal law" simply because the court did not cite our opinions. Id., at 8. We have held that a state court need not even be aware of our precedents, "so long as neither the reasoning nor the result of the state-court decision contradicts them." Ibid.

According to the Sixth Circuit, Ohio's failure to charge in the indictment that respondent was a "principal" was the functional equivalent of "dispensing with the reasonable doubt requirement." 310 F. 3d, at 421 (citing Sullivan v. Louisiana, supra, at 280). Our precedents, however, do not support its conclusion. In noncapital cases, we have often held that the trial court's failure to instruct a jury on all of the statutory elements of an offense is subject to harmless-error analysis. E. g., Neder v. United States, 527 U. S. 1, 19 (1999); California v. Roy, 519 U. S. 2 (1996) (per curiam); Carella v. California, 491 U. S. 263, 266 (1989) (per curiam); Pope v. Illinois, 481 U. S. 497 (1987). In Neder, for example, we held that such an error "differs markedly from the constitutional violations we have found to defy harmless-error review." 527 U. S., at 8. In so holding, we explicitly distinguished Sullivan because the error in Sullivan—the failure to instruct the jury that the State must prove the elements of an offense beyond a reasonable doubt—" 'vitiat[ed] all the jury's findings,' " 527 U. S., at 11, whereas the trial court's failure to instruct the jury on one element of an offense did not, see id., at 13-15. Where the jury was precluded from determining only one element of an offense, we held that harmless-error review is feasible. Ibid.

We cannot say that because the violation occurred in the context of a capital sentencing proceeding that our precedent

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