United States v. Harvey Hugs

Harvey Hugs appeals from the judgment entered following his conviction by a jury of involuntary manslaughter in violation of 18 U.S.C. §§ 1153 and 1112. Mr. Hugs was charged with and found guilty of involuntarily killing Theron Old Elk on April 10, 2001. Mr. Hugs contends that the court’s instructions to the jury altered the charges brought against him by the grand jury and thus violated his Fifth Amendment rights. He also contends that a condition of his supervised release, which requires that he provide the Government a DNA sample, is unconstitutionally vague and improper. We affirm Mr. Hugs’s conviction because we conclude that the erroneous jury instructions did not affect Mr. Hugs’s substantial rights under the plain error rule. We also affirm the special condition of Mr. Hugs’s supervised release because we conclude that requiring Mr. Hugs to provide a DNA sample is a minimal intrusion into his right to privacy.

I

At approximately 3:15 p.m. on April 10, 2001, Harvey Hugs, an Indian, was involved in a single vehicle automobile accident inside the Crow Indian Reservation, in which Theron Old Elk died. Though there was no witness of the actual crash, the police investigation…