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"N.Y. Judge Vacates Deportation Plea Due to Changing Legal Landscape"

By Douglas A. Berman

The title of this post is the headline of this piece in the New York Law Journal, which gets started this way: A judge's warning that a defendant could be subject to deportation if he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor did not alleviate the ineffectiveness of his counsel under a new standard expressed by the U.S. Supreme Court, the judge ruled in vacating his prior acceptance of the plea. Brooklyn Acting Supreme Court Justice Joseph K. McKay observed that the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473, had altered the legal landscape since he had accepted Jose Garcia's plea 2 1/2 years ago. "[W]here, as here, defendant is found in fact to have been misled by bad advice from a so-called retained specialist and by a lack of advice from his defense attorney, the Court's general warning will not automatically cure counsel's failure nor erase the consequent prejudice," McKay wrote in People v...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on September 01, 2010 (boomark / email).