United States v. Octavious Hastings, 676 F. App'x 932

Hastings and co-defendant Rashard Jones sold a gun to confidential informant Teresa Murphy during a controlled purchase recorded under audio/video surveillance.
Murphy drove Jones and Hastings to Hastings’s house; she testified that she saw Hastings hand something to Jones as they left the house, after which Jones concealed it in his pants.
Murphy admitted she did not disclose the observed handoff to law enforcement immediately and first reported it during witness preparation about a week before trial, attributing her refreshed memory to reviewing surveillance video.
Special Agent McLeod corroborated that Murphy did not report the handoff in initial debriefing or reports, and that she was paid for undercover work and the purchase.
Hastings was convicted under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(1) and 924(a)(2) for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and, on appeal, raised for the first time an abuse-of-process claim based on the government’s subpoenaing Murphy despite her alleged unreliability.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the government abused process by subpoenaing Murphy despite allegedly knowing she was unreliable	Hastings: prosecution should not have compelled testimony from a witness of "questionable reliability," and Murphy’s belated handoff testimony was the only direct evidence of Hastings’s possession	Government: not directly argued in opinion; court notes Hastings failed to identify legal basis for raising abuse-of-process on direct criminal appeal	Court: Affirmed; Hastings failed plain-error showing and provided no controlling law recognizing such an abuse-of-process claim on direct criminal appeal
Whether any error was plain under Olano plain-error standard	Hastings: error affected substantial rights because the belated testimony was crucial to conviction	Government: (implicit) no plain error shown and Hastings did not preserve claim below	Court: Even assuming error, Hastings cannot show it was "plain" because no clear controlling law supports his asserted abuse-of-process claim

United States v. Olano, 507 U.S. 725 (plain-error standard)
United States v. Dortch, 696 F.3d 1104 (11th Cir. 2012) (plain-error requires obvious error under current law)
United States v. Madden, 733 F.3d 1314 (11th Cir. 2013) (four-part plain-error framework)
Dunwoody Homeowners Ass’n v. DeKalb Cty., 887 F.2d 1455 (11th Cir. 1989) (discussion of abuse-of-process as common-law tort)
Dykes v. Hosemann, 776 F.2d 942 (11th Cir. 1985) (abuse of process concept under Florida law)