the district court had properly instructed them. Sullivan v. Louisiana, 508 U.S. 275, 281, 113 S.Ct. 2078, 2082-83, 124 L.Ed.2d 182 (1993). “No matter how overwhelming the evidence of materiality, the district court was not permitted to direct a finding for the Government on this element.” Raether, 82 F.3d at 193 (citing Sullivan, 508 U.S. at 277, 113 S.Ct. at 2080). Although we acknowledge that an affeeting-substantial-rights inquiry is governed by a harmless error analysis, see Raether, 82 F.3d at 194, we question whether a Gaudin error could ever be considered harmless. Our court, in Wells, implicitly recognized the futility of applying the harmless error inquiry to a Gaudin error when it vacated a defendant’s convictions without discussion of harmless error. Wells, 63 F.3d at 751 (<HOLDING>). Where the issue of materiality is completely
holding gaudin dictates that we vacate defendants convictions holding that records of a criminal defendants previous convictions in state court are nontestimonial holding that trial judge properly considered defendants misdemeanor convictions holding that all convictions under wisconsin sexual assault statute were not per se convictions for crimes of violence holding that when defendant has not testified we review the denial of the motion only for obvious error affecting substantial rights and will vacate the judgments of convictions only if the convictions were produced by a fundamentally unfair trial