Plain when? Plain now!

Krishna Patrick Muir v. District of Columbia (decided January 14, 2016).

Players:  Associate Judges Glickman and McLeese, Senior Judge Newman.  Opinion by Judge Glickman; Judge Newman concurs in the judgment.  Trial judge: Anthony Epstein.  Daniel K. Dorsey for Mr. Muir.

Facts:     Mr. Muir was tried for driving under the influence (DUI) and operating a vehicle while impaired (OWI) in 2011, before the Court of Appeals decided, in Taylor v. District of Columbia, 49 A.2d 1259, 1267 (D.C. 2012), that the alcohol impairment threshold is the same for both offenses, and that both require proof of an “appreciable degree” of impairment.  Mr. Muir’s jury was instructed that it could convict Mr. Muir of OWI if it found that his consumption of alcohol impaired his ability to operate a motor vehicle “in any way,” while in order to convict him of DUI, it would have to find “an appreciable degree” of impairment.  The jury convicted Mr. Muir of OWI and acquitted him of DUI.

Issue:  Whether the erroneous instruction, given at a time when the law was unsettled, constituted plain error necessitating reversal of the OWI conviction.   

Held:  Mr. Muir’s conviction was reversed because the Court of Appeals held that all four prongs of the Olano test were satisfied.  Of interest is the “plainness” analysis.  In 1997, the Supreme Court held in Johnson v. United States, 520 U.S. 461 (1997), that when the law at the time of trial was settled and contrary to the law at the time of appeal, it is sufficient for plain error purposes that the error be “plain” at the time of appellate consideration.  Johnson left open, however, the question whether the same rule applies when the law at the time of trial is unsettled.  This question was decided in Henderson v. United States, 133 S.Ct. 1121, 1130-31 (2013), when the Supreme Court held that “whether a legal question was settled or unsettled at the time of trial, it is enough that an error be plain at the time of appellate consideration for the second [plainness] part of the four-part Olano test to be satisfied.”  

In this case, the Court of Appeals adopted the analysis of the Supreme Court in Henderson for the purpose of interpreting local Super. Ct. Crim. R. 52(b).  Following Henderson, it held that plainness will be determined at the time of appellate review, even when the law was unsettled at the time of trial.  Applying this test, the Court concluded the instruction was error and the error was plain.  Because the Court found the remaining prongs of the plain error test were met, it reversed Mr. Muir’s OWI conviction. JF

Read full opinion here.