consult with defendant. Instead, Aifer decided on her own that defendant should not testify at the penalty-phase retrial. The next question is whether counsel’s deficiency prejudiced defendant. Defendant argues that we should forego this analysis because of the fundamental nature of the right to testify. He posits that the impact of a defendant’s own words on a jury is too speculative to support a finding of harmless error. Consequently, defendant urges the adoption of a per se rule that the denial of the right to testify is presumptively prejudicial. Alternatively, defendant requests that we require the State to prove that the denial of the right to testify was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. See Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24, 87 S.Ct 824, 828, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967) (<HOLDING>). Previously, we have evaluated claims
holding that in order to conclude that federal constitutional error is harmless court must find that error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt holding that appellate court should review error in trial procedure to determine if it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt holding that before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt recognizing that where the error involved defies analysis by harmless error standards or the data is insufficient to conduct a meaningful harmless error analysis then the error will not be proven harmless beyond a reasonable doubt holding that federal appellate courts are authorized to engage in constitutional harmless error analysis in the first instance when a state appellate court does not undertake such an analysis and that such error must be harmless beyond a reasonable doubt