Edward Dell v. United States

Our precedent requires the outcome reached by the majority here and I therefore concur in the result. As the majority opinion sets out, a person who has been convicted of a crime, but whose lawyer failed to raise a point of law that could have lessened the sentence for that conviction, has a heavy burden to later get the benefit of the overlooked legal principle. It is black letter law that he must meet the “plain error” standard of review. The difficulty in showing “plain error” is intended to foster a system where parties must tell a court when it has made a mistake, so the court can fix it…