Whether the plain-error doctrine permits an appeals court to affirm a conviction based on a potential crime that it identifies in the record that was different from the incident for which the defendant pled guilty and on which the trial court erroneously relied as the basis for the conviction

QUESTIONS PRESENTED The questions presented are as follows: The First Circuit affirmed a conviction for money laundering based on a financial transaction that was a different financial transaction from the one on which the government based the conviction before the District Court. In addition, the First Circuit held that an advance payment of the purchase price in an alleged drug transaction constituted a financial transaction involving the “proceeds of specified unlawful activity,” where that same drug transaction was also the underlying transaction that generated the “proceeds,” thereby putting the First Circuit in conflict with at least two other Circuit Courts that have read the “proceeds” element of money laundering as requiring a transaction in funds previously and separately derived from unlawful activity. The questions presented by these holdings are: 1. Whether the plain-error doctrine permits an appeals court to affirm a conviction based on a potential crime that it identifies in the record that was different from the incident for which the defendant pled guilty and on which the trial court erroneously relied as the basis for the conviction. 2. Whether an advance payment for a drug transaction can constitute a transaction involving the “proceeds of specified unlawful activity” for purposes of the money-laundering statute, where the “specified unlawful activity” is that same drug transaction and not a prior offense from which the funds used were derived.