Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461, 9 (1997)

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Cite as: 520 U. S. 461 (1997)

Opinion of the Court

v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963) (a total deprivation of the right to counsel); Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510 (1927) (lack of an impartial trial judge); Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254 (1986) (unlawful exclusion of grand jurors of defendant's race); McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U. S. 168 (1984) (the right to self-representation at trial); Waller v. Georgia, 467 U. S. 39 (1984) (the right to a public trial); Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. 275 (1993) (erroneous reasonable-doubt instruction to jury).

It is by no means clear that the error here fits within this limited class of cases. Sullivan v. Louisiana, the case most closely on point, held that the erroneous definition of "reasonable doubt" vitiated all of the jury's findings because one could only speculate what a properly charged jury might have done. Id., at 280. The failure to submit materiality to the jury, as in this case, can just as easily be analogized to improperly instructing the jury on an element of the offense, e. g., Yates v. Evatt, 500 U. S. 391 (1991); Carella v. California, 491 U. S. 263 (1989) (per curiam); Pope v. Illinois, 481 U. S. 497 (1987); Rose v. Clark, 478 U. S. 570 (1986), an error which is subject to harmless-error analysis, as it can be to failing to give a proper reasonable-doubt instruction altogether. Cf. California v. Roy, 519 U. S. 2, 5 (1996) (per curiam) ("The specific error at issue here—an error in the instruction that defined the crime—is . . . as easily characterized as a 'misdescription of an element' of the crime, as it is characterized as an error of 'omission' ").

D

But we need not decide that question because, even assuming that the failure to submit materiality to the jury "affec[ted] substantial rights," it does not meet the final requirement of Olano. When the first three parts of Olano are satisfied, an appellate court must then determine whether the forfeited error " 'seriously affect[s] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings' " before

469

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