What follows is an opinion from the Supreme Court of the United States. Your task is to determine the bases on which the Supreme Court rested its decision with regard to the legal provision that the Court considered in the case. Consider "judicial review (national level)" if the majority determined the constitutionality of some action taken by some unit or official of the federal government, including an interstate compact. Consider "judicial review (state level)" if the majority determined the constitutionality of some action taken by some unit or official of a state or local government. Consider "statutory construction" for cases where the majority interpret a federal statute, treaty, or court rule; if the Court interprets a federal statute governing the powers or jurisdiction of a federal court; if the Court construes a state law as incompatible with a federal law; or if an administrative official interprets a federal statute. Do not consider "statutory construction" where an administrative agency or official acts "pursuant to" a statute, unless the Court interprets the statute to determine if administrative action is proper. Consider "interpretation of administrative regulation or rule, or executive order" if the majority treats federal administrative action in arriving at its decision.Consider "diversity jurisdiction" if the majority said in approximately so many words that under its diversity jurisdiction it is interpreting state law. Consider "federal common law" if the majority indicate that it used a judge-made "doctrine" or "rule; if the Court without more merely specifies the disposition the Court has made of the case and cites one or more of its own previously decided cases unless the citation is qualified by the word "see."; if the case concerns admiralty or maritime law, or some other aspect of the law of nations other than a treaty; if the case concerns the retroactive application of a constitutional provision or a previous decision of the Court; if the case concerns an exclusionary rule, the harmless error rule (though not the statute), the abstention doctrine, comity, res judicata, or collateral estoppel; or if the case concerns a "rule" or "doctrine" that is not specified as related to or connected with a constitutional or statutory provision. Consider "Supreme Court supervision of lower federal or state courts or original jurisdiction" otherwise (i.e., the residual code); for issues pertaining to non-statutorily based Judicial Power topics; for cases arising under the Court's original jurisdiction; in cases in which the Court denied or dismissed the petition for review or where the decision of a lower court is affirmed by a tie vote; or in workers' compensation litigation involving statutory interpretation and, in addition, a discussion of jury determination and/or the sufficiency of the evidence.

Opinion:
SCHNEBLE v. FLORIDA
No. 68-5009.
Argued January 17-18, 1972
Decided March 21, 1972
Rehnquist, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BüRger, C. J., and Stewart, White, BlacKmuN, and Powell, JJ., joined. Marshall, J., filed a dissenting opinion in which Douglas and BrennaN, JJ., joined, post, p. 432.
Clyde B. Wells argued the cause and filed a brief for petitioner.
George R. Georgieff, Assistant Attorney General of Florida, argued the cause for respondent. With him on the brief was Robert L. Shevin, Attorney General.
Mr. Justice Rehnquist
delivered the opinion of the Court.
Petitioner Schneble and his codefendant Snell were tried jointly in a Florida state court for murder. At the trial neither defendant took the stand, but police witnesses testified to certain admissions made by each defendant implicating both of them in the murder. Both defendants were convicted, and the Florida Supreme Court affirmed. This Court vacated and remanded the case for further consideration in the light of Bruton v. United States, 391 U. S. 123 (1968). Schneble v. Florida, 392 U. S. 298 (1968). Upon remand, the Supreme Court of Florida reversed Snell's conviction, finding that it had been obtained in violation of Bruton, but affirmed petitioner's conviction. We again granted certiorari, limited to the question of whether petitioner’s conviction had been obtained in violation of the Bruton rule. In the circumstances of this case, we find that any violation of Bruton that may have occurred at petitioner’s trial was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. We therefore affirm.
The State’s case showed that a threesome consisting of petitioner, Snell, and the victim, Mrs. Maxine Collier, left New Orleans in a borrowed automobile en route to Florida. While they were traveling across the Florida Panhandle, Mrs. Collier was murdered, and her body placed in the trunk of the automobile. The body was then transported in the car to the environs of Tampa, where it was left behind some bushes in a trash dump. Petitioner and Snell then continued their odyssey southward to the Florida Keys, and thence north along the east coast of Florida. They were apprehended for unrelated offenses in West Palm Beach, but upon discovering blood in the trunk of the car police officers there commenced the investigation that ultimately led to the charging of petitioner and Snell with the murder of Mrs. Collier.
The investigating officers testified at the trial that petitioner initially, while admitting knowledge of the murder, claimed that Snell had shot Mrs. Collier while petitioner was away from the car taking a walk. Petitioner later conceded, however, that his earlier story was false. He admitted to the police that it was he who had strangled Mrs. Collier, and that Snell had finally shot her in the head as she lay dying. The state court held these admissions of petitioner to be voluntary and admissible. Since our grant of certiorari here was limited to the Bruton issue, our treatment of that question assumes that these admissions were properly before the trial court.
One of the investigating officers also related at trial a statement made to him by Snell. Petitioner challenges this testimony as violative of Bruton, since Snell did not take the stand and thus was not available for cross-examination. According to the testimony of this officer, Snell said petitioner had occupied the rear seat of the car and had never left Snell alone in the car with Mrs. Collier during the trip. While Snell’s statement fell far short of the type of comprehensive and detailed confession made by petitioner, it did tend to undermine petitioner’s initial (but later abandoned) claim that he had left Snell alone during the time at which the murder occurred. Snell’s statement also placed petitioner in the position in the car from which the victim could more easily have been strangled. Thus, petitioner claims, the introduction of Snell’s out-of-court statement, not subject to effective cross-examination, deprived petitioner of his right of confrontation in violation of Bruton.
The Court held in Bruton that the admission of a confession of a codefendant who did not take the stand deprived the defendant of his rights under the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause, when that confession implicated the defendant. Even when the jury is instructed to consider the confession only against the declarant, the Court in Bruton determined that the danger of misuse of the confession by the jury was too great to be constitutionally permissible. Bruton was held to be retroactive in Roberts v. Russell, 392 U. S. 293 (1968), and thus applies to the instant case even though it was tried more than two years prior to Bruton.
The mere finding of a violation of the Bruton rule in the course of the trial, however, does not automatically require reversal of the ensuing criminal conviction. In some cases the properly admitted evidence of guilt is so overwhelming, and the prejudicial effect of the code-fendant’s admission is so insignificant by comparison, that it is clear beyond a reasonable doubt that the improper use of the admission was harmless error.
In Harrington v. California, 395 U. S. 250 (1969), the defendant was tried for murder jointly with three others. As in the instant case, he admitted being at the scene of the crime, but denied complicity. One of his code-fendants, who confessed and implicated him, took the stand and was subject to cross-examination. The other two codefendants, whose statements corroborated defendant’s presence at the scene of the crime, did not take the stand. Noting the overwhelming evidence of Harrington’s guilt, and the relatively insignificant prejudicial impact of these codefendants’ statements, the Court held that any violation of Bruton that had occurred was harmless error.
In the instant case, petitioner’s confession was minutely detailed and completely consistent with the objective evidence. He informed police of the precise location at which they ultimately located the body, and guided them to this out-of-the-way spot. Although petitioner initially tried to put the sole blame on Snell, this version of the facts did not satisfactorily explain certain deep rope burns on petitioner’s hands. When confronted with the fact of the rope burns, petitioner admitted that he and Snell had plotted to kill Mrs. Collier in order to steal her money and the automobile.
Petitioner confessed that he had strangled Mrs. Collier with a plastic cord, and recounted the commission of the crime in minute and grisly detail culminating in Snell’s shooting the victim in the head because she still showed signs of life after the strangulation. These details of petitioner’s later account of the offense were internally consistent, were corroborated by other objective evidence, and were not contradicted by any other evidence in the case. They were consistently reiterated by petitioner on several occasions after his first exposition of them.
Not only is the independent evidence of guilt here overwhelming, as in Harrington, but the allegedly inadmissible statements of Snell at most tended to corroborate certain details of petitioner’s comprehensive confession. True, under the judge’s charge, the jury might have found the confession involuntary and therefore inadmissible. But this argument proves too much; without Schneble’s confession and the resulting discovery of the body, the State’s case against Schneble was virtually nonexistent. The remaining evidence in the case — the disappearance of Mrs. Collier sometime during the trip, and Snell’s statement that Schneble sat in the back seat of the car during the trip and never left Snell alone with Mrs. Collier — could not by itself convict Schneble of this or any other crime. Charged as they were by the judge that they must be “satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt” and “to a moral certainty” of Schneble’s guilt before they could convict him, the jurors could on no rational hypothesis have found Schneble guilty without reliance on his confession. Judicious application of the harmless-error rule does not require that we indulge assumptions of irrational jury behavior when a perfectly rational explanation for the jury’s verdict, completely consistent with the judge’s instructions, stares us in the face. See Rogers v. Missouri Pacific R. Co., 352 U. S. 500, 504-505 (1957).
Having concluded that petitioner’s confession was considered by the jury, we must determine on the basis of “our own reading of the record and on what seems to us to have been the probable impact ... on the minds of an average jury,” Harrington v. California, supra, at 254, whether Snell’s admissions were sufficiently prejudicial to petitioner as to require reversal. In Bruton, the Court pointed out that “[a] defendant is entitled to a fair trial but not a perfect one.” 391 U. S., at 135, quoting Lutwak v. United States, 344 U. S. 604, 619 (1953). Thus, unless there is a reasonable possibility that the improperly admitted evidence contributed to the conviction, reversal is not required. See Chapman v. California, 386 U. S. 18, 24 (1967). In this case, we conclude that the “minds of an average jury” would not have found the State’s case significantly less persuasive had the testimony as to Snell’s admissions been excluded. The admission into evidence of these statements, therefore, was at most harmless error.
Affirmed.
The question of whether Schneble’s sentence of death in this case violates the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment proscription of “cruel and unusual punishment” is therefore not at issue here. That question is currently under consideration in Aikens v. California, No. 68-5027, and companion cases. All executions in Florida have been stayed by the Governor’s executive order until July 1, 1973. See Fla. Exec. Order No. 72-8 (Feb. 21, 1972).

Question: What is the basis of the Supreme Court's decision?

Choices:
judicial review (national level)
judicial review (state level)
Supreme Court supervision of lower federal or state courts or original jurisdiction
statutory construction
interpretation of administrative regulation or rule, or executive order
diversity jurisdiction
federal common law

Answer: 1