Opinion ID: 783820
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Reading of indictment to jury pool

Text: 13 Clay also contends that the panel should reverse his conviction because the district court read the entire indictment to the jury pool, which included a reference to his prior drug conviction. According to Clay, this constituted a structural error warranting reversal. See United States v. Monger, 185 F.3d 574, 578 (6th Cir.1999) (stating that structural errors, . . . [which] infect[ ] the entire trial process, and necessarily render[ ] a trial fundamentally unfair ... require [the court] to reverse a criminal conviction regardless of the strength of the evidence against the defendant). Monger held that the district court's failure to instruct the jury on the lesser included offense of simple possession was an intrinsically harmful structural error which requires us to reverse. Id. (noting that such an error does not warrant the use of the harmless-error rule). Although the government admits that the district court in the present case erred in reading the entire indictment, it denies that the error was structural and instead maintains that it was harmless. 14 This court has applied a harmless-error analysis in similar situations. See Myers v. United States, 198 F.3d 615, 619 (6th Cir.1999) (holding that the district court's reading to the jury the nature of the defendant's prior offenses was harmless error); United States v. McFerren, 142 F.3d 437, 1998 WL 180514, at -4 (6th Cir. Apr.8, 1998) (per curiam) (applying the harmless-error standard to the defendant's claim that the district court erred when it read to the jury the indictment that contained references to his prior convictions); see also United States v. Turner, 565 F.2d 539, 541 (8th Cir.1977) (per curiam) ([O]nce the trial court had been informed of the stipulation of counsel, he should have read the indictment to the jury without reference to the nature of the felony conviction. However, we do not feel that this error was unduly prejudicial in light of the substantial evidence of Turner's guilt.). 15 We conclude that Myers is more applicable to the present case than Monger. The district court's inadvertent mistake in disclosing the nature of Clay's prior conviction to the jury pool was not an error of the same magnitude as failing to instruct the jury on a lesser included offense. In addition, the evidence against Clay was so overwhelming that it is more probable than not that the error did not materially affect the verdict. See United States v. Daniel, 134 F.3d 1259, 1262 (6th Cir.1998) ([I]t is well settled that an error which is not of constitutional dimension is harmless unless it is more probable than not that the error materially affected the verdict.) (internal quotation marks omitted). Clay was apprehended in an uninhabited apartment under suspicious circumstances. When the officers entered, he ran to the back of the apartment and threw a plastic bag containing cocaine on the floor. A large sum of cash and a firearm were found on his person. In light of this evidence, the district court's error in mistakenly reading the nature of Clay's prior drug conviction to the jury pool was harmless.