284
Rehnquist, C. J., concurring
or prevented the jury from considering certain evidence. (In this regard, a trial in which a deficient reasonable-doubt instruction is given seems to me to be quite different from one in which no reasonable-doubt instruction is given at all.) Thus, in many respects, the Cage violation committed at Sullivan's trial bears the hallmark of an error that is amenable to harmless-error analysis.
One may question whether, even in the case of Sandstrom error, the ability to conduct harmless-error review is dependent on the existence of "beyond a reasonable doubt" jury findings. In the typical case, of course, a jury does not make explicit factual findings; rather, it simply renders a general verdict on the question of guilt or innocence. Thus, although it may be possible to conclude from the jury's verdict that it has found a predicate fact (or facts), the reviewing court is usually left only with the record developed at trial to determine whether it is possible to say beyond a reasonable doubt that the error did not contribute to the jury's verdict. Moreover, any time an appellate court conducts harmless-error review it necessarily engages in some speculation as to the jury's decisionmaking process; for in the end no judge can know for certain what factors led to the jury's verdict. Cf. Pope v. Illinois, 481 U. S. 497, 503, n. 6 (1987). Yet harmless-error review has become an integral component of our criminal justice system. See Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U. S. 673, 681 (1986); Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18, 22 (1967).
Despite these lingering doubts, I accept the Court's conclusion that a constitutionally deficient reasonable-doubt instruction is a breed apart from the many other instructional errors that we have held are amenable to harmless-error analysis. See, e. g., Carella v. California, 491 U. S. 263 (1989) (per curiam) (instruction containing erroneous conclusive presumption); Pope v. Illinois, supra (instruction misstating an element of the offense); Rose v. Clark, supra (instruction containing erroneous burden-shifting presump-
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