harmless. See Franklin, supra; Engle v. Koehler, supra; Anderson v. Harless, supra. Respondents’ second and final argument is that, given the overwhelming nature of the evidence in this case, any Sandstrom error committed by the trial court was harmless beyond any reasonable doubt. This issue presents an extremely close question, but one which, when viewed fairly, forthrightly and without regard to the court’s “belief” in the defendant’s actual guilt or innocence, must be decided, as a matter of law, in petitioner’s favor. Until last month’s opinion in Rose v. Clark, supra, the Supreme Court had left open the issue of whether Sandstrom error could ever be held harmless under Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). See e.g., Franklin, 105 S.Ct. at 1977 (<HOLDING>); Koehler v. Engle, 104 S.Ct. at 1673
holding the sandstrom error in that case was clearly not harmless on the facts and therefore declining to address the question of whether an erroneous charge that shifts a burden of persuasion to the defendant on an essential element of the offense can ever be harmless holding that failure to instruct on an essential element was harmless error because the element was so clearly established holding that failure to submit an element of the offense to the jury is subject to harmless error analysis recognizing that the burden of persuasion for a showing of prejudice was on the defendant holding that the improper use of a mixedmotive instruction in a butfor case shifted the burden of persuasion on a central issue in the case and therefore the error cannot be harmless