The Court’s ruling today was in Padilla v. Kentucky, here. Padilla is a 40 year permanent resident of the U.S. who honorably served in the Vietnam War. He pled guilty to transporting a large amount of marijuana. Padilla’s attorney told him before the guilty plea that he did not have to worry about his immigration status because he had been in the U.S. for such a long period of time.
The Court ruled that a lawyer who fails to inform his client that the consequence of a guilty plea is automatic deportation is incompetent under Strickland v. Washington. The case was sent back to Kentucky to determine whether Padilla is entitled to relief under Strickland’s prejudice prong.
Concurrence by Alito, who thinks that counsel is only incompetent when he affirmatively misinforms the client about deportation consequences.
Scalia (joined by Thomas) dissents along classic textualist/originalist grounds.
From the Majority Opinion:
We agree with Padilla that constitutionally competent counsel would have advised him that his conviction for drug distribution made him subject to automatic deportation. Whether he is entitled to relief depends on whether he has been prejudiced, a matter that we do not address.
***
Immigration law can be complex, and it is a legal specialty of its own. Some members of the bar who represent clients facing criminal charges, in either state or federal court or both, may not be well versed in it. There will, therefore, undoubtedly be numerous situations in which the deportation consequences of a particular plea are unclear or uncertain. The duty of the private practitioner in such cases is more limited. When the law is not succinct and straightforward…a criminal defense attorney need do no more than advise a noncitizen client that pending criminal charges may carry a risk of adverse immigration consequences. But when the deportation consequence is truly clear, as it was in this case, the duty to give correct advice is equally clear.
From the Dissent:
In the best of all possible worlds, criminal defendants contemplating a guilty plea ought to be advised of all serious collateral consequences of conviction, and surely ought not to be misadvised. The Constitution, however, is not an all-purpose tool for judicial construction of a perfect world; and when we ignore its text in order to make it that, we often find ourselves swinging a sledge where a tack hammer is needed.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused a lawyer”for his defense” against a “criminal prosecutio[n]“—not for sound advice about the collateral consequences of conviction.
