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Opinion of the Court
conviction because they infect the entire trial process. See id., at 309-310. Since our landmark decision in Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18 (1967), we have applied the harmless-beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard in reviewing claims of constitutional error of the trial type.
In Chapman, we considered whether the prosecution's reference to the defendants' failure to testify at trial, in violation of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,5 required reversal of their convictions. We rejected the argument that the Constitution requires a blanket rule of automatic reversal in the case of constitutional error, and concluded instead that "there may be some constitutional errors which in the setting of a particular case are so unimportant and insignificant that they may, consistent with the Federal Constitution, be deemed harmless." Id., at 22. After examining existing harmless-error rules, including the federal rule (28 U. S. C. § 2111), we held that "before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt." 386 U. S., at 24. The State bears the burden of proving that an error passes muster under this standard.
Chapman reached this Court on direct review, as have most of the cases in which we have applied its harmless-error standard. Although we have applied the Chapman standard in a handful of federal habeas cases, see, e. g., Yates v. Evatt, 500 U. S. 391 (1991); Rose v. Clark, 478 U. S. 570 (1986); Milton v. Wainwright, 407 U. S. 371 (1972); Anderson v. Nelson, 390 U. S. 523 (1968) (per curiam), we have yet squarely to address its applicability on collateral review.6
5 Griffin v. California, 380 U. S. 609 (1965).
6 In Greer v. Miller, 483 U. S. 756 (1987), we granted certiorari to consider the same question presented here but did not reach this question because we concluded that no Doyle error had occurred in that case. See 483 U. S., at 761, n. 3, 765. But see id., at 768 (Stevens, J., concurring in judgment) ("I believe the question presented in the certiorari petition—
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