74
Opinion of the Court
In sum, there are good reasons to doubt that expressing a harmless-error standard in Rule 11(h) was meant to carry any implication beyond its terms. At the very least, there is no reason persuasive enough to think 11(h) was intended to repeal Rule 52(b) for every Rule 11 case.
III
The final question goes to the scope of an appellate court's enquiry into the effect of a Rule 11 violation, whatever the review, plain error or harmless. The Court of Appeals confined itself to considering the record of "the plea proceeding," 224 F. 3d, at 1156, applying Circuit precedent recognizing that the best evidence of a defendant's understanding when pleading guilty is the colloquy closest to the moment he enters the plea. While there is no doubt that this position serves the object of Rule 11 to eliminate wasteful post hoc probes into a defendant's psyche, McCarthy, 394 U. S., at 470, the Court of Appeals was more zealous than the policy behind the Rule demands. The Advisory Committee intended the effect of error to be assessed on an existing record, no question, but it did not mean to limit that record strictly to the plea proceedings: the enquiry " 'must be resolved solely on the basis of the Rule 11 transcript' and the other portions (e. g., sentencing hearing) of the limited record made in such cases." Advisory Committee's Notes 1569 (quoting United States v. Coronado, 554 F. 2d 166, 170, n. 5 (CA5 1977)).
True, language in McCarthy ostensibly supports the position taken by the Court of Appeals (which did not, however, rest on it); we admonished that "[t]here is no adequate substi-voluntary and creating a record at the time of the plea supporting that decision.
Vonn's final retort that application of the plain-error rule would tend to leave some "unconstitutional pleas" uncorrected obviates the question in this case, which is who bears the burden of proving that Rule 11 error did or did not prejudice the defendant: the Government or the defendant?
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