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SCOTUS: Failure to advise of collateral consequence of deportation can be IAC

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

SCOTUS decided Padilla v. Kentucky today holding (7-2) that defense counsel can provide ineffective assistance of counsel in failing to advise a criminal defendant of the risk of deportation. Part of the syllabus: Petitioner Padilla, a lawful permanent resident of the United States for over 40 years, faces deportation after pleading guilty to drug-distribution charges in Kentucky. In postconviction proceedings, he claims that his counsel not only failed to advise him of this consequence before he entered the plea, but also told him not to worry about deportation since he had lived in this country so long. He alleges that he would have gone to trial had he not received this incorrect advice. The Kentucky Supreme Court denied Padilla postconviction relief on the ground that the Sixth Amendment’s effective-assistance-of-counsel guarantee does not protect defendants from erroneous deportation advice because deportation is merely a “collateral” consequence of a conviction...continue to full post

Full post as published by Law Of Criminal Defense on March 31, 2010 (boomark / email).