436
Opinion of the Court
Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18, 24 (1967), held that a conviction tainted by constitutional error must be set aside unless the error complained of "was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt," we held in Brecht that the standard of harmlessness generally to be applied in habeas cases is the Kotteakos formulation (previously applicable only in reviewing nonconstitutional errors on direct appeal), Brecht, supra, at 622-623. Under Kotteakos a conviction may be set aside only if the error "had substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury's verdict." Kotteakos, supra, at 776. Agurs, however, had previously rejected Kotteakos as the standard governing constitutional disclosure claims, reasoning that "the constitutional standard of materiality must impose a higher burden on the defendant." Agurs, 427 U. S., at 112. Agurs thus opted for its formulation of materiality, later adopted as the test for prejudice in Strickland, only after expressly noting that this standard would recognize reversible constitutional error only when the harm to the defendant was greater than the harm sufficient for reversal under Kotteakos. In sum, once there has been Bagley error as claimed in this case, it cannot subsequently be found harmless under Brecht.9
The fourth and final aspect of Bagley materiality to be stressed here is its definition in terms of suppressed evidence considered collectively, not item by item.10 As Justice Blackmun emphasized in the portion of his opinion written for the Court, the Constitution is not violated every time the
9 See also Hill v. Lockhart, 28 F. 3d 832, 839 (CA8 1994) ("[I]t is unnecessary to add a separate layer of harmless-error analysis to an evaluation of whether a petitioner in a habeas case has presented a constitutionally significant claim for ineffective assistance of counsel").
10 The dissent accuses us of overlooking this point and of assuming that the favorable significance of a given item of undisclosed evidence is enough to demonstrate a Brady violation. We evaluate the tendency and force of the undisclosed evidence item by item; there is no other way. We evaluate its cumulative effect for purposes of materiality separately and at the end of the discussion, at Part IV-D, infra.
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