United States v. Pizarro

I write separately in response to the preceding concurrence and its inventive *313gloss on Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 119 S.Ct. 1827, 144 L.Ed.2d 35 (1999), and its progeny. Neder simply applied the standard constitutional harmless-error rule articulated nearly fifty years ago in Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967), to a jury instruction that omitted an element of an offense. See Neder, 527 U.S. at 4, 119 S.Ct. 1827 (holding that “the harmless-error rule of Chapman v. California ” applies to the failure of a trial judge to submit an element of the…