In exchange for petitioner Puckett’s guilty plea, the Government agreed to request (1) a three-level reduction in his offense level under the Federal Sentencing Guidelines on the ground that he had accepted responsibility for his crimes; and (2) a sentence at the low end of the applicable Guidelines range. The District Court accepted the plea, but before Puckett was sentenced he assisted in another crime. As a result, the Government opposed any reduction in Puckett’s offense level, and the District Court denied the three-level reduction. On appeal, Puckett raised for the first time the argument that by backing away from its reduction request, the Government had broken the plea agreement. The Fifth Circuit found that Puckett had forfeited that claim by failing to raise it below; applied Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure Rule 52(b)’s plain-error standard for unpreserved claims of error; and held that, although the error had occurred and was obvious, Puckett had not satisfied the third prong of plain-error analysis in that he failed to demonstrate that his ultimate sentence was affected, especially since the District Judge had found that acceptance-of-responsibility reductions for defendants who continued to engage in criminal activity were so rare as “to be unknown.”
Held: Rule 52(b)’s plain-error test applies to a forfeited claim, like Puckett’s, that the Government failed to meet its obligations under a plea agreement, and applies in the usual fashion. Pp. 4–14.
