Cite as: 527 U. S. 1 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
trial cannot reliably serve its function as a vehicle for determination of guilt or innocence . . . and no criminal punishment may be regarded as fundamentally fair." Id., at 577-578.
Unlike such defects as the complete deprivation of counsel or trial before a biased judge, an instruction that omits an element of the offense does not necessarily render a criminal trial fundamentally unfair or an unreliable vehicle for determining guilt or innocence. Our decision in Johnson v. United States, supra, is instructive. Johnson was a perjury prosecution in which, as here, the element of materiality was decided by the judge rather than submitted to the jury. The defendant failed to object at trial, and we thus reviewed her claim for "plain error." Although reserving the question whether the omission of an element ipso facto " 'affect[s] substantial rights,' " 520 U. S., at 468-469, we concluded that the error did not warrant correction in light of the " 'overwhelming' " and "uncontroverted" evidence supporting materiality, id., at 470. Based on this evidence, we explained, the error did not " 'seriously affec[t] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.' " Id., at 469 (quoting United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 736 (1993)).
That conclusion cuts against the argument that the omission of an element will always render a trial unfair. In fact, as this case shows, quite the opposite is true: Neder was tried before an impartial judge, under the correct standard of proof and with the assistance of counsel; a fairly selected, impartial jury was instructed to consider all of the evidence and argument in respect to Neder's defense against the tax charges. Of course, the court erroneously failed to charge the jury on the element of materiality, but that error did not render Neder's trial "fundamentally unfair," as that term is used in our cases.
We have often applied harmless-error analysis to cases involving improper instructions on a single element of the offense. See, e. g., Yates v. Evatt, 500 U. S. 391 (1991)
9
Page: Index Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007