Armarcion D. Henderson, Petitioner v. United States (568 U.S. 266)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided February 20, 2013 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 568 U.S. 266 · 133 S. Ct. 1121
- Decided
- February 20, 2013
- Term
- October Term 2012
- Vote
- 6–3
- Majority author
- Justice Breyer
- Issue area
- Criminal Procedure
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Breyer delivered the opinion of the Court. A federal court of appeals normally will not correct a legal error made in criminal trial court proceedings unless the defendant first brought the error to the trial court’s attention. See United States v. Olano, 507 U. S. 725, 731 (1993). But Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b), creating an exception to the normal rule, says that “[a] plain error that affects substantial rights may be considered even though it was not brought to the [trial] court’s attention.” (Emphasis added.) The Rule does not say explicitly, however, as of just what time the error must be “plain.” Must the lower court ruling be plainly erroneous as of the time the lower court made the error? Or can an error still count as “plain” if the erroneous nature of that ruling is not “plain” until the time of appellate review? The case before us concerns a District Court’s decision on a substantive legal question that was unsettled at the time the trial court acted, thus foreclosing the possibility that any error could have been “plain” then. Before the case was final and at the time of direct appellate review, however, the question had become settled in the defendant’s favor, making the trial court’s error “plain”—but not until that later time. In our view, as long as the error was plain as of that later time—the time of appellate. review—the error is…
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