8
Opinion of the Court
In this case the Government does not dispute that the District Court erred under Gaudin in deciding the materiality element of a § 7206(1) offense itself, rather than submitting the issue to the jury. See Brief for United States 10, and n. 1. We must decide whether the error here is subject to harmless-error analysis and, if so, whether the error was harmless.
A
We have recognized that "most constitutional errors can be harmless." Fulminante, supra, at 306. "[I]f the defendant had counsel and was tried by an impartial adjudicator, there is a strong presumption that any other [constitutional] errors that may have occurred are subject to harmless-error analysis." Rose v. Clark, 478 U. S. 570, 579 (1986). Indeed, we have found an error to be "structural," and thus subject to automatic reversal, only in a "very limited class of cases." Johnson v. United States, 520 U. S. 461, 468 (1997) (citing Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U. S. 335 (1963) (complete denial of counsel); Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510 (1927) (biased trial judge); Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254 (1986) (racial discrimination in selection of grand jury); McKaskle v. Wiggins, 465 U. S. 168 (1984) (denial of self-representation at trial); Waller v. Georgia, 467 U. S. 39 (1984) (denial of public trial); Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U. S. 275 (1993) (defective reasonable-doubt instruction)).
The error at issue here—a jury instruction that omits an element of the offense—differs markedly from the constitutional violations we have found to defy harmless-error review. Those cases, we have explained, contain a "defect affecting the framework within which the trial proceeds, rather than simply an error in the trial process itself." Fulminante, supra, at 310. Such errors "infect the entire trial process," Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 630 (1993), and "necessarily render a trial fundamentally unfair," Rose, 478 U. S., at 577. Put another way, these errors deprive defendants of "basic protections" without which "a criminal
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