Opinion of the Court
"a reasonable probability that, but for [the error claimed], the result of the proceeding would have been different." United States v. Bagley, 473 U.S. 667, 682 (1985) (opinion of Blackmun, J.) (adopting the prejudice standard of Strickland v. Washginton, 466 U.S. 668, 694 (1984), for claims under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83 (1963) (internal quotation marks omitted)); 473 U.S., at 685 (White, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (same).[1]
No reason has appeared for treating the phrase "affecting substantial rights" as untethered to a prejudice requirement when applying Olano to this nonstructural error, or for doubting that Bagley is a sensible model to follow. As Vonn makes clear, the burden of establishing entitlement to relief for plain error is on the defendant claiming it, and for several reasons, we think that burden should not be too easy for defendants in Dominguez's position. First, the standard should enforce the policies that underpin Rule 52(b) generally, to encourage timely objections and reduce wasteful reversals by demanding strenuous exertion to get relief for unpreserved error. See Vonn, 535 U.S., at 73. Second, it should respect the particular importance of the finality of guilty pleas, which usually rest, after all, on a defendant's
- ↑ This standard is similar to one already applied by some Courts of Appeals, though those courts have not drawn a direct connection to Strickland and Bagley, and in some cases understood themselves to be reviewing for harmless, rather than plain, error. See United States v. Martinez, 289 F.3d 1023, 1029 (CA7 2002) (on plain error review, asking "whether any Rule 11 violations would have likely affected [the defendant's] willingness to plead guilty"); see also United States v. Johnson, 1 F.3d 296, 302 (CA5 1993) (en banc) (on harmless error review, asking "whether the defendant's knowledge and comprehension of the full and correct information would have been likely to affect his willingness to plead guilty"); cf. United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725, 734–735 (1993) (the main difference as to substantial rights in the harmless and plain error analyses is that the burden of persuasion shifts from Government to defendant).
