- 214 -
Brown v. United States, 411 U.S. 223, 231-232
(1973)(admission of the out-of-court statement of a
nontestifying codefendant in violation of the Sixth
Amendment Confrontation Clause); Milton v. Wainwright,
407 U.S. 371 (1972)(confession obtained in violation of
Massiah v. United States, 377 U.S. 201 (1964));
Chambers v. Maroney, 399 U.S. 42, 52-53
(1970)(admission of evidence obtained in violation of
the Fourth Amendment); Coleman v. Alabama, 399 U.S. 1,
10-11 (1970)(denial of counsel at a preliminary hearing
in violation of the Sixth Amendment Counsel Clause).
The common thread connecting these cases is that
each involved "trial error"--error which occurred
during the presentation of the case to the jury, and
which may therefore be quantitatively assessed in the
context of other evidence presented in order to
determine whether its admission was harmless beyond a
reasonable doubt. In applying harmless-error analysis
to these many different constitutional violations, the
Court has been faithful to the belief that the
harmless-error doctrine is essential to preserve the
"principle that the central purpose of a criminal trial
is to decide the factual question of the defendant's
guilt or innocence, and promotes public respect for the
criminal process by focusing on the underlying fairness
of the trial rather than on the virtually inevitable
presence of immaterial error." Van Arsdall, supra, at
681 (citations omitted).
* * * * * * *
The admission of an involuntary confession--a
classic "trial error"--is markedly different from the
other two constitutional violations referred to in the
Chapman footnote [Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18,
23 n.8 (1967)] as not being subject to harmless-error
analysis. One of these violations, involved in Gideon
v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963), was the total
deprivation of the right to counsel at trial. The
other violation, involved in Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U.S.
510 (1927), was a judge who was not impartial. These
are structural defects in the constitution of the trial
mechanism, which defy analysis by "harmless-error"
standards. The entire conduct of the trial from
beginning to end is obviously affected by the absence
of counsel for a criminal defendant, just as it is by
the presence on the bench of a judge who is not
impartial. Since our decision in Chapman, other cases
have added to the category of constitutional errors
which are not subject to harmless error the following:
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