believed the District Court should have adopted, for the first time in the District of Columbia, a procedure bifurcating the guilt and sentencing phases of Frady's trial. 121 U. S. App. D. C., at 85, 348 F. 2d, at 91 (McGowan, J., concurring). By this narrow margin, Frady escaped electrocution.

Frady was then resentenced to a life term. Almost immediately, he began a long series of collateral attacks on his sentence,' culminating in the case now before us.

C

Frady initiated the present action by filing a motion under 28 U. S. C. § 22555 seeking the vacation of his sentence because the jury instructions used at his trial in 1963 were defective. Specifically, Frady argued that the Court of Appeals, in cases decided after his trial and appeal, had disapproved instructions identical to those used in his case. As determined by these later rulings," the judge at Frady's trial

without an assumption that these jurors were illiterate morons." Id., at 107, 348 F. 2d, at 113 (concurring in part and dissenting in part).

'As summarized by the Court of Appeals, 204 U. S. App. D. C. 234, 236, n. 2, 636 F. 2d 506, 508, n. 2 (1980), Frady filed four motions to vacate or reduce his sentence in 1965, and one each in 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1978. This last motion resulted in a Court of Appeals decision directing that Frady's separate sentences for robbery and murder run concurrently rather than consecutively. United States v. Frady, 197 U. S. App. D. C. 69, 607 F. 2d 383 (1979) (Frady II).

Section 2255 provides in pertinent part:

"A prisoner in custody under sentence of a court established by Act of Congress claiming the right to be released upon the ground that the sentence was imposed in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States, or that the court was without jurisdiction to impose such sentence, or that the sentence was in excess of the maximum authorized by law, or is otherwise subject to collateral attack, may move the court which imposed the sentence to vacate, set aside or correct the sentence."

"Frady cited Belton v. United States, 127 U. S. App. D. C. 201, 204-205, 382 F.2d 150, 153–154 (1967); Green v. United States, 132 U. S. App. D. C.

had improperly equated intent with malice by stating that "a wrongful act . . . intentionally done . . . is therefore done with malice aforethought." See 204 U. S. App. D. C. 234, 236, n. 6, 636 F. 2d 506, 508, n. 6 (1980). Also, the trial judge had incorrectly instructed the jury that "the law infers or presumes from the use of such weapon in the absence of explanatory or mitigating circumstances the existence of the malice essential to culpable homicide." See id., at 236, 636 F.2d, at 508. In his §2255 motion Frady contended that these instructions compelled the jury to presume malice and thereby wrongfully eliminated any possibility of a manslaughter verdict, since manslaughter was defined as culpable homicide without malice."

The District Court denied Frady's §2255 motion, stating that Frady should have challenged the jury instructions on direct appeal, or in one of his many earlier motions. The Court of Appeals reversed. The court held that the proper standard to apply to Frady's claim is the "plain error" standard governing relief on direct appeal from errors not objected

98, 99-100, 405 F. 2d 1368, 1369-1370 (1968) (Green I); and United States v. Wharton, 139 U. S. App. D. C. 293, 297-298, 433 F. 2d 451, 455-456 (1970). The Government does not contest Frady's assertion that the jury instructions were erroneous as determined by these later rulings.

'See, e. g., Fryer v. United States, 93 U. S. App. D. C. 34, 38, 207 F. 2d 134, 138 (manslaughter is "the unlawful killing of a human being without malice") (emphasis deleted), cert. denied, 346 U. S. 885 (1953); United States v. Wharton, supra, at 296, 433 F. 2d, at 454 (malice is "the sole element differentiating murder from manslaughter").

Frady also challenged the trial judge's instruction that "[a] person is presumed to intend the natural [and] probable consequences of his act." See 204 U. S. App. D. C., at 237, n. 7, 636 F. 2d, at 509, n. 7. Frady argued that this instruction was unconstitutional under our decision in Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U. S. 510 (1979), in which we held that a similar instruction that "[t]he law presumes that a person intends the ordinary consequences of his voluntary acts" might impermissibly lead a reasonable juror to believe the presumption is conclusive. The Court of Appeals refrained from deciding this issue, however, so we do not consider it here.

to at trial, Fed. Rule Crim. Proc. 52(b), rather than the "cause and actual prejudice" standard enunciated in Wainwright v. Sykes, 433 U. S. 72 (1977), Francis v. Henderson, 425 U. S. 536 (1976), and Davis v. United States, 411 U. S. 233 (1973), governing relief on collateral attack following procedural default at trial. Finding the challenged instructions to be plainly erroneous, the court vacated Frady's sentence and remanded the case for a new trial or, more realistically, the entry of a judgment of manslaughter. Over a vigorous dissent, the full Court of Appeals denied the Government a rehearing en banc.

We granted the Government's petition for a writ of certiorari to review whether the Court of Appeals properly invoked the "plain error" standard in considering Frady's belated collateral attack. 453 U. S. 911 (1981).

II

Before we reach the merits, however, we first must consider an objection Frady makes to our grant of certiorari. Frady argues that we should refrain from reviewing the decision below because the issues presented pertain solely to the local law of the District of Columbia, with which we normally do not interfere.R

Frady's contention is that the federal courts in the District of Columbia exercise a purely local jurisdictional function when they rule on a § 2255 motion brought by a prisoner convicted of a local law offense. Thus, according to Frady, the general federal law controlling the disposition of §2255 motions does not apply to his case. Instead, a special local brand of § 2255 law, developed to implement that section for

"As we said in Fisher v. United States, 328 U. S. 463, 476 (1946): “Matters relating to law enforcement in the District [of Columbia] are entrusted to the courts of the District. Our policy is not to interfere with the local rules of law which they fashion, save in exceptional situations where egregious error has been committed."

the benefit of local offenders in the District of Columbia, controls. Frady concludes that we should therefore refrain from disturbing the ruling below, since it is based on an adequate and independent local ground of decision.9

To examine Frady's contention, it is necessary to review some history. When Frady was tried in 1963, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia had exclusive jurisdiction over local felonies, and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit acted as the local appellate court, issuing binding decisions of purely local law. In 1970, however, the District of Columbia Court Reform and Criminal Procedure Act (Court Reform Act), 84 Stat. 473, split the local District of Columbia and federal criminal jurisdictions, directing local criminal cases to a newly created local court system and retaining (with minor exceptions) only federal criminal cases in the existing Federal District Court and Court of Appeals.

As part of this division of jurisdiction, the Court Reform Act substituted for § 2255 a new local statute controlling collateral relief for those convicted in the new local trial court. See D. C. Code § 23-110 (1981). The Act, however, did not alter the jurisdiction of the federal courts in the District to hear postconviction motions and appeals brought under §2255, either by prisoners like Frady who were convicted of local offenses prior to the Act, or by prisoners convicted in federal court after the Act.

The crux of Frady's argument is that the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment would be violated unless the Court Reform Act is interpreted as implicitly and retroactively splitting, not just the District's court system, but also the District's law governing § 2255 motions. According to Frady, equal protection principles require that a § 2255 motion brought by a prisoner con

'Frady, of course, does not argue that we do not have jurisdiction under 28 U. S. C. § 1254(1) to hear this case, only that we should, in our discretion, refrain from exercising it.

victed of a local crime in Federal District Court prior to the passage of the Court Reform Act be treated identically to a motion under local D. C. Code § 23-110 brought by a prisoner convicted in the local Superior Court after the passage of the Act. Frady suggests that the Court of Appeals for this reason must have ruled on his motion as though it were subject to the local law developed pursuant to § 23-110, and that we should not intervene in this local dispute.

Frady's argument, however, was neither made to the court below nor followed by it. Nowhere in the Court of Appeals' opinion or in the submissions to that court or to the District Court"—is there any hint that there may be peculiarities of § 2255 law unique to collateral attack in the District of Columbia. To the contrary, the analysis and authorities cited by the Court of Appeals make it clear that the court relied on the general federal law controlling all § 2255 motions, and did not intend to afford Frady's § 2255 motion special treatment simply because Frady was convicted under the District of Columbia Code rather than under the United States Code.

Moreover, the Court of Appeals would have erred had it done so. There is no reason to believe that Congress intended the result Frady suggests, and he does not attempt the impossible task of showing that it did. Furthermore, Frady's suggestions to the contrary notwithstanding, equal protection principles do not require that a motion filed pursuant to § 2255 by a prisoner convicted in the Federal District Court in 1963 be treated as though it had been filed pursuant to D. C. Code § 23-110 after 1970. In fact, even those tried in federal court contemporaneously with those tried for the same offense in the local court need not always be treated identically. As we noted in Swain v. Pressley, 430 U. S. 372, 379-380, n. 12 (1977), for example, persons

10 We note that Frady's winning pro se brief to the court below, though extensively discussing the general federal law regarding the proper disposition of § 2255 motions, nowhere suggested that special local rules should be applied to the case.