Supreme Court: Bad advice on deportation can void guilty plea

[babylonsister]

Supreme Court: Bad advice on deportation can void guilty plea

By Halimah Abdullah | McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that defendants are entitled to know that the potential consequences of a guilty plea include deportation for noncitizens, a decision that could have broader significance for the more than 12.8 million legal immigrants who live in the U.S.

The case, Padilla v. Kentucky, focused on Jose Padilla, a Honduran-born immigrant who faces deportation after pleading guilty to felony marijuana trafficking. He isn't the U.S. citizen of the same name who was convicted in 2007 of conspiring to aid terrorists.

In a 7-2 decision, the high court reversed the judgment of the Kentucky Supreme Court, which had ruled that the Sixth Amendment's effective-assistance-of-counsel guarantee doesn't protect defendants from incorrect deportation advice because deportation is a "collateral" consequence of conviction. The justices left it to a lower court to determine whether Padilla's guilty plea should be thrown out, however.

"It is our responsibility under the Constitution to ensure that no criminal defendant — whether a citizen or not — is left to the 'mercies of incompetent counsel,' " Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in the majority opinion. "To satisfy this responsibility, we now hold that counsel must inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation."

more...

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/31/91407/supreme-court-bad-advice-on-deportation.html

[Gman]

1. Roberts and Scalia?

Scalia and Alito? Surely Thomas did not concur...

[WolverineDG]

2. Yeah, but their dissent makes no sense

and shows that they weren't courtroom attorneys, or that if they were, they were piss-poor ones. Saying that an attorney does not have the duty to inform the client of the consequences of accepting a plea or settlement agreement is condoning malpractice. A client cannot give informed consent unless he/she has actually been informed of the consequences (the reasonably foreseeable ones, not the extreme "what if" ones).

dg

[sendero]

3. I'm amazed .

... that this bozo court got it right. Miracles do sometimes happen.