Cite as: 527 U. S. 1 (1999)
Opinion of the Court
because he intended to repay the loans, and that he reasonably believed, based on the advice of his accountant and lawyer, that he need not report the proceeds as income. App. 208-211, 235 (closing argument). In this situation, where a reviewing court concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that the omitted element was uncontested and supported by overwhelming evidence, such that the jury verdict would have been the same absent the error, the erroneous instruction is properly found to be harmless. We think it beyond cavil here that the error "did not contribute to the verdict obtained." Chapman, supra, at 24.
Neder disputes our conclusion that the error in this case was harmless. Relying on language in our Sullivan and Yates decisions, he argues that a finding of harmless error may be made only upon a determination that the jury rested its verdict on evidence that its instructions allowed it to consider. See Sullivan, 508 U. S., at 279; Yates, 500 U. S., at 404. To rely on overwhelming record evidence of guilt the jury did not actually consider, he contends, would be to dispense with trial by jury and allow judges to direct a guilty verdict on an element of the offense.2
But at bottom this is simply another form of the argument that a failure to instruct on any element of the crime is not subject to harmless-error analysis. Yates involved constitutionally infirm presumptions on an issue that was the crux of the case—the defendant's intent. But in the case of an omitted element, as the present one, the jury's instructions preclude any consideration of evidence relevant to the omit-2 Justice Scalia, in his opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, also suggests that if a failure to charge on an uncontested element of the offense may be harmless error, the next step will be to allow a directed verdict against a defendant in a criminal case contrary to Rose v. Clark, 478 U. S. 570, 578 (1986). Happily, our course of constitutional adjudication has not been characterized by this "in for a penny, in for a pound" approach. We have no hesitation reaffirming Rose at the same time that we subject the narrow class of cases like the present one to harmless-error review.
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