itself, and is not amenable to harmless-error review. [A] conviction cannot be understood to cure the taint attributable to a charging body selected on the basis of race. Once having found discrimination in the selection of a grand jury, we simply cannot know that the need to indict would have been assessed in the same way by a grand jury properly constituted. The overriding imperative to eliminate this systemic flaw in the charging process, as well as the difficulty of assessing its effect on any given defendant, requires our continued adherence to a rule of mandatory reversal. Id. at 263-64, 106 S.Ct. 617. To avoid the procedural default bar, a habeas petitioner claiming a structural error need not show actual prejudice. Owens v. United States, 483 F.3d 48, 64-65 (1 st Cir.2007) (<HOLDING>); see also Sustache-Rivera v. United States,
holding that federal court cannot review claim procedurally defaulted in state court absent showing of either cause and prejudice or a fundamental miscarriage of justice holding that the convention claim was procedurally defaulted holding that a defendant who is seeking to excuse a procedurally defaulted claim of structural error need not establish actual prejudice and so the court need not require petitioner to prove that his counsels failure to object to the trial closure was actually prejudicial holding that a defendant who is seeking to excuse a procedurally defaulted claim of structural error need not establish actual prejudice holding that an argument not raised before the district court is procedurally defaulted