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Lower courts struggling to figure our Padilla's retroactive impact

By Douglas A. Berman

The New York Law Journal has this interesting new piece, headlined "Courts Differ About Retroactive Effect of High Court Counsel Ruling," which spotlights lower courts struggling to implement the Supreme Court's work in Padilla. Here are excerpts: In Padilla, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), the Court held that an attorney's failure to inform a client of the collateral deportation consequences of a guilty plea amounted to ineffective assistance of counsel. However, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Abraham Clott last week declined to give retroactive effect to Padilla, "at least with respect to a misdemeanor conviction." "This Court concludes that in Padilla the Supreme Court announced a new rule of criminal procedure rather than applied settled law to a new set of facts and that the Padilla rule is not a 'watershed' change that must be applied retroactively to cases on collateral review," Clott wrote in People v...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on July 27, 2010 (boomark / email).