holding that a petit jury’s guilty verdict for drug-related offenses established the probable cause to charge defendants with the offenses and rendered harmless any error in the grand jury’s charging decision that may have resulted when two law enforcement agents testified in tandem before a grand jury; further, societal costs of retrial were too substantial to justify setting aside verdict when the error had no effect on the outcome of the trial
How later courts described this case
- holding that a petit jury’s guilty verdict for drug-related offenses established the probable cause to charge defendants with the offenses and rendered harmless any error in the grand jury’s charging decision that may have resulted when two law enforcement agents testified in tandem before a grand jury; further, societal costs of retrial were too substantial to justify setting aside verdict when the error had no effect on the outcome of the trial
- holding 15 that, where a defendant was convicted at trial, “any error in the grand jury proceeding 16 connected with the charging decision was harmless” because a subsequent guilty verdict 17 by a petit jury “means not only that there was probable cause to believe that the defendants 18 were guilty as charged, but also that they are in fact guilty as charged beyond a reasonable 19 doubt”
- holding that the harmless error rule, under Fed.R.Crim.P. 52(a), applies to “ ‘errors, defects, irregularities or variances’ occurring before a grand jury just as [it] ... applie[s] ... to such error occurring in the criminal trial itself” and applying harmless error analysis to alleged Fed.R.Crim.P. 6(d) error raised after the trial commenced
- holding that because the defendants were convicted after trial beyond a reasonable doubt, probable cause undoubtedly *225 existed to bind them over for trial; therefore, any error in the grand jury proceedings connected with the charging decision was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt
Written by the judges who cited it.
Distinguished
Distinguished by United States v. William A. Kilpatrick, Declan J. O'donnell, Sheila C. Lerner, the Bank of Nova Scotia, Michael Alberga, C.S. Gill, and C.M. Smith, 821 F.2d 1456 (1987)
In Taylor we distinguished between technical errors like those addressed in Mechanik and errors which adversely threaten a defendant’s right to fundamental fairness in the criminal process.
The opinion
Chief Justice Burger,
concurring.
I concur in Justice Rehnquist’s opinion for the Court. I write separately only to state my view that this case is controlled by Justice Black’s opinion for the Court in Costello v. United States, 350 U. S. 359 (1956).