Johnson v. United States

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In this case the trial court itself decided the issue of materiality in a perjury prosecution, rather than submitting it to the jury as our decision in United States v. Gaudin, 515 U. S. 506 (1995), now requires. No objection was made by the petitioner, Joyce B. Johnson, and we hold that the court’s action in this case was not “plain error” of the sort which an appellate court may notice under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 52(b).

In the late 1980’s, a federal investigation into the cocaine and marijuana trafficking of Earl James Fields revealed that he and his partner had amassed some…