18
Opinion of the Court
ted element, and thus there could be no harmless-error analysis. Since we have previously concluded that harmless-error analysis is appropriate in such a case, we must look to other cases decided under Chapman for the proper mode of analysis.
The erroneous admission of evidence in violation of the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against self-incrimination, see Arizona v. Fulminante, 499 U. S. 279 (1991), and the erroneous exclusion of evidence in violation of the right to confront witnesses guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment, see Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U. S. 673 (1986), are both subject to harmless-error analysis under our cases. Such errors, no less than the failure to instruct on an element in violation of the right to a jury trial, infringe upon the jury's fact-finding role and affect the jury's deliberative process in ways that are, strictly speaking, not readily calculable. We think, therefore, that the harmless-error inquiry must be essentially the same: Is it clear beyond a reasonable doubt that a rational jury would have found the defendant guilty absent the error? To set a barrier so high that it could never be surmounted would justify the very criticism that spawned the harmless-error doctrine in the first place: "Reversal for error, regardless of its effect on the judgment, encourages litigants to abuse the judicial process and bestirs the public to ridicule it." R. Traynor, The Riddle of Harmless Error 50 (1970).
We believe that where an omitted element is supported by uncontroverted evidence, this approach reaches an appropriate balance between "society's interest in punishing the guilty [and] the method by which decisions of guilt are to be made." Connecticut v. Johnson, 460 U. S., at 86 (plurality opinion). The harmless-error doctrine, we have said, "recognizes the principle that the central purpose of a criminal trial is to decide the factual question of the defendant's guilt or innocence, . . . and promotes public respect for the criminal process by focusing on the underlying fairness of the trial."
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