Henderson v. United States (2013)

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Henderson v. United States
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued November 28, 2012 Decided February 20, 2013
Full case name	Armarcion D. Henderson v. United States
Docket no.	11-9307
Citations	568 U.S. 266 (more) 133 S. Ct. 1121; 185 L. Ed. 2d 85; 2013 U.S. LEXIS 1611; 81 U.S.L.W. 4089
Case history
Prior	United States v. Henderson, 646 F.3d 223 (5th Cir. 2011); rehearing en banc denied, 665 F.3d 160 (5th Cir. 2011); cert. granted, 567 U.S. 934 (2012).
Holding
The Supreme Court held that an error is deemed to be a "plain error" based on the law at the time of the appellate review of the case, not at the time of the trial. It is unreasonable to expect either the defendant or the trial court to predict the outcome of unsettled issues of law, therefore it is the role of the appellate court to review what is considered "plain error" at the time of the appellate review.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Case opinions
Majority	Breyer, joined by Roberts, Kennedy, Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan
Dissent	Scalia, joined by Thomas, Alito

Henderson v. United States, 568 U.S. 266 (2013), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held regardless of whether a legal question was settled or unsettled at the time of trial, an error is "plain" within the meaning of Rule 52(b) of Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure so long as the error was plain at the time of appellate review.^[1]