"Defendants must get deportation warning; Justices extend right to counsel" by Jesse J. Holland, Associated Press | April 1, 2010
WASHINGTON — Immigrants have a constitutional right to be told by their lawyers whether pleading guilty to a crime could lead to deportation, the Supreme Court said yesterday.
The ruling extends the Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantee of “effective assistance of counsel’’ in criminal cases to immigration advice.
“The severity of deportation — the equivalent of banishment or exile — only underscores how critical it is for counsel to inform her noncitizen client that he faces a risk of deportation,’’ said Justice John Paul Stevens, who wrote the opinion for the court.
The Constitution of the world?
The decision adds a burden on lawyers to advise immigrant clients about the consequences of a guilty plea, though more than 20 states already require some notification. Twenty-seven states also say the cost of providing lawyers for poor immigrant defendants will skyrocket because the states could also have to pay for immigration advice.
The feds do not care.
Related: Illegals Already Have Amnesty
That is why.
The ruling came in the case of Jose Padilla, who was born in Honduras. Padilla asked the high court to throw out his 2001 guilty plea to drug charges in Kentucky, which made his deportation mandatory.
Padilla, who has lived in the United States for more than 40 years as a legal permanent resident, said he asked his lawyer whether a guilty plea would affect his immigration status and was told it would not. Padilla’s trial lawyer was wrong, and he now faces deportation.
Then he isn't a noncitizen, is he?
Related: Memory Hole: What Four Years of Torture Will Do to an Innocent Man
Not the same Padilla, and that guy was a legal citizen!
“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,’ ’’ Stevens wrote for the court....
I appreciate the thought; however, when does that begin applying to Americans or the poor souls at Gitmo?
Also see:
- Clog the Court: No Net Neutrality
- Republicans Bowing to Obama on Court Nominee
- Obama's Next Nominee: Cagey Kagan
- Clear the Court: Stevens Leavin'
- Clear the Court: Signing the Campaign Checks
- Clear the Court: Laboring at the Supreme Court
- Clear the Court: Abort! Abort!
- Clear the Court: Surfing For Porn
- Clear the Court: Jury Pool
- Clear the Court: Condoning Cyberbullying
- Clear the Court: Ashcroft's Absolution
- Clear the Court: Fatal Framing
- Clear the Court: Flying a False Flag
