Cite as: 535 U. S. 55 (2002)
Opinion of the Court
a defendant's rights: the defendant who sat silent at trial has the burden to show that his "substantial rights" were affected. Id., at 734-735. And because relief on plain-error review is in the discretion of the reviewing court, a defendant has the further burden to persuade the court that the error " 'seriously affect[ed] the fairness, integrity or public reputation of judicial proceedings.' " Id., at 736 (quoting United States v. Atkinson, 297 U. S. 157, 160 (1936)).
The question here is whether Congress's importation of the harmless-error standard into Rule 11(h) without its companion plain-error rule was meant to eliminate a silent defendant's burdens under the Rule 52(b) plain-error review, and instead give him a right to subject the Government to the burden of demonstrating harmlessness. If the answer is yes, a defendant loses nothing by failing to object to obvious Rule 11 error when it occurs. We think the answer is no.
A
Vonn's most obvious recourse is to argue from the text itself: Rule 11(h) unequivocally provides that a trial judge's "variance" from the letter of the Rule 11 scheme shall be disregarded if it does not affect substantial rights, the classic shorthand formulation of the harmless-error standard. It includes no exception for nonobjecting defendants.
Despite this unqualified simplicity, however, Vonn does not argue that Rule 11 error must always be reviewed on the 11(h) standard, with its burden on the Government to show an error harmless. Even though Rule 11(h) makes no distinction between direct and collateral review, Vonn does not claim even that the variant of harmless-error review applicable on collateral attack, see Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U. S. 619, 638 (1993), would apply when evaluating Rule 11 error on habeas review. Rather, he concedes that the adoption of 11(h) had no effect on the stringent standard for collateral review of Rule 11 error under 28 U. S. C. § 2255 (1994 ed.), as established by our holding in United States v. Timmreck,
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