Title: Commonwealth v. Mercado
Citation: N/A
Docket Number: SJC-11964
State: Massachusetts
Issuer: Massachusetts Supreme Court
Date: April 6, 2016

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SJC-11964  
 
 
 
 
COMMONWEALTH  vs.  MANUEL ANTONIO MERCADO. 
 
 
 
Suffolk.     February 10, 2016. - April 6, 2016. 
 
Present:  Gants, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Duffly, Lenk, 
& Hines, JJ. 
 
 
Controlled Substances.  Alien.  Constitutional Law, Plea, 
Assistance of counsel, Retroactivity of judicial holding. 
Due Process of Law, Plea, Assistance of counsel.  Practice, 
Criminal, Plea, Assistance of counsel, Retroactivity of 
judicial holding. 
 
 
 
 
Complaint received and sworn to in the East Boston Division 
of the Boston Municipal Court Department on February 26, 1990.  
 
 
A motion for a new trial, filed on March 18, 2015, was 
heard by John E. McDonald, Jr., J.  
 
 
The Supreme Judicial Court granted an application for 
direct appellate review.  
 
 
 
Benjamin L. Falkner for the defendant. 
 
John P. Zanini, Assistant District Attorney, for the 
Commonwealth. 
 
Emma C. Winger, Jennifer Klein, & Wendy S. Wayne, Committee 
for Public Counsel Services, for Committee for Public Counsel 
Services & another, amici curiae, submitted a brief. 
 
 
2 
 
 
CORDY, J.  In Commonwealth v. Sylvain, 466 Mass. 422, 423-
424 (2013), S.C., 473 Mass. 832 (2016), we affirmed our decision 
in Commonwealth v. Clarke, 460 Mass. 30 (2011), that, under 
Massachusetts law, defense counsel's duty to provide noncitizen 
defendants with accurate advice regarding the deportation 
consequences of pleading guilty (or being convicted at trial), 
as articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Padilla v. 
Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 360 (2010), was to be applied 
retroactively on collateral review.1  See Clarke, supra at 31.  
We set the date of retroactivity at April 1, 1997, the effective 
date of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant 
Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-
546 (IIRIRA), which, together with the enactment of the 
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, Pub. L. No. 104-
132, 110 Stat. 1214 (effective Apr. 24, 1996) (AEDPA), made 
deportation for noncitizens convicted of certain criminal 
offenses virtually inevitable.  See Padilla, supra at 363-364.  
See also Clarke, supra at 41. 
 
The offense to which the defendant pleaded guilty is 
possession of a class A substance (heroin) in violation of G. L. 
                     
 
1 Our decision in Commonwealth v. Sylvain, 466 Mass. 422 
(2013), S.C., 473 Mass. 832 (2016), came in the aftermath of 
Chaidez v. United States, 133 S. Ct. 1103, 1105 (2013), in which 
the United States Supreme Court concluded that its decision in 
Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010), established a new rule 
and therefore was not retroactive in effect under Federal 
precedent. 
3 
 
c. 94C, § 34.  Although he received a suspended sentence, the 
statute provides for a possible penalty of up to two years in a 
house of correction, and consequently, deportation was virtually 
inevitable under the provisions of AEDPA.2  His guilty plea was 
entered after the effective date of AEDPA, but before the 
effective date of IIRIRA.  Thus, the first issue we must decide 
in this case is whether the retroactivity affirmed in the 
Sylvain case should extend back to the effective date of AEDPA, 
April 24, 1996, for convictions of offenses for which AEDPA 
eliminated the then available protections (or discretionary 
waivers) for noncitizens who were sentenced to less than one 
year of imprisonment for controlled substance convictions.  For 
the reasons articulated in Clarke and Sylvain, we conclude that 
it should.3 
                     
 
2 Prior to enactment of the Antiterrorism and Effective 
Death Penalty Act, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214 (1996) 
(AEDPA), a noncitizen but legal permanent resident, who might 
have become deportable for criminal convictions, had a defense 
to deportation by way of a discretionary waiver under § 212(c) 
of the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1952.  See 
Immigration & Naturalization Serv. v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 297 
(2001) (INS).  The class of noncitizens eligible for § 212(c) 
relief was dramatically reduced by AEDPA, which precluded such 
relief for (among other crimes) any aggravated felony conviction 
(regardless of sentence) and any controlled substance or firearm 
conviction for which a maximum imprisonment of one year or more 
may be imposed.  Id.  See § 440(d) of AEDPA, 110 Stat. at 1277.  
The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, 
Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-546 (1996), eliminated 
§ 212(c) relief entirely.  INS, supra. 
 
 
3 The Commonwealth has not argued otherwise in this appeal. 
4 
 
 
The next issue we need to decide is whether, in the 
circumstances of this case, the defendant's motion for a new 
trial was properly denied.  For the reasons set forth below, we 
vacate the denial and remand the case to the motion judge for 
further proceedings. 
 
It is uncontested that the defendant came to the United 
States in 1987 at the age of fourteen.  Most of his family lives 
in Massachusetts, but his father still resides in his home 
country of the Dominican Republic.  The defendant is not a 
United States citizen and his primary language is Spanish.  He 
was arrested at Logan Airport on February 23, 1990, and charged 
with possession with intent to distribute a class A substance 
(heroin).  After his arraignment, he fled Massachusetts and 
lived in Florida.4 
 
The defendant returned to Massachusetts in 1996, his 
default was removed, and he was held in custody pending the 
resolution of the criminal complaint.  On February 7, 1997, he 
pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of possession of a class A 
substance, for which he was sentenced to one year in a house of 
                     
 
4 In Florida, he was apparently convicted of another 
criminal offense. 
 
5 
 
correction suspended for one year with community service 
requirements.5 
 
More than seventeen years later, on August 4, 2014, he 
received a notice to appear in which the United States 
Department of Homeland Security alleged that he was a removable 
alien because of his conviction of possession of a class A 
substance.6  On March 18, 2015, the defendant filed a motion for 
a new trial in the present case, alleging that his attorney was 
constitutionally ineffective for failing to advise him 
adequately as to the likely deportation consequences of his 
guilty plea. 
 
A hearing on the motion was held in the Boston Municipal 
Court, at which the attorney who had represented the defendant 
at the plea tender testified, as did the defendant himself.  
Their testimony differed on several critical points.  For 
example, the attorney testified that she advised the defendant 
that there might be immigration consequences if he was convicted 
                     
 
5 In November, 1996, under the then existent two-tier trial 
de novo system in the District Court, the defendant had offered 
an admission to sufficient facts to the possession with intent 
complaint with the hope of receiving a continuance without a 
finding disposition.  He received a suspended sentence instead 
and appealed to the jury session in the Chelsea Division of the 
District Court Department, where he subsequently pleaded guilty 
to the reduced charge. 
 
 
6 Subsequently, on August 26, 2015, the United States 
Immigration Court ordered the defendant deported to the 
Dominican Republic. 
6 
 
and that he should consult an immigration attorney as to what 
those consequences could be.  The defendant testified that no 
such advice was given.  The attorney further testified that an 
interpreter was not necessary in her conversations with the 
defendant, and that the defendant told her that he consented to 
the police search of his coat at Logan Airport (in which the 
heroin was found), and thus a motion to suppress was not viable.  
The defendant, however, testified that he used someone to 
interpret for him arranged by his mother on the day of his 
guilty plea, that he did not tell his attorney that he consented 
to the search, and that he had just picked up the coat from the 
floor after it had been dropped by some unknown third party. 
 
Having observed this testimony, the motion judge was in a 
position to make the credibility assessments necessary to a 
determination whether counsel's advice was deficient and, if so, 
whether the defendant had met his burden to prove that there was 
"a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's errors, he 
would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going 
to trial."  Clarke, 460 Mass. at 47, quoting Hill v. Lockhart, 
474 U.S. 52, 59 (1985).  In other words, the defendant must 
offer evidence sufficient to "convince the court that a decision 
to reject the plea bargain would have been rational under the 
7 
 
circumstances."  Clarke, supra, quoting Padilla, 559 U.S. at 
372.7 
 
Unfortunately, the judge made no findings after the hearing 
concluded, but simply denied the motion.  This may have been the 
product of the Commonwealth's understandable argument that the 
holding in Sylvain was retroactive only to convictions accruing 
after April 1, 1997, a ruling we have now clarified. 
 
Consequently, we cannot be certain on what ground or 
grounds the judge may have based his denial.  The denial is 
therefore vacated and the matter remanded for further 
proceedings consistent with this opinion.8 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
So ordered. 
 
                     
 
7 As we noted in Commonwealth v. Clarke, 460 Mass. 30, 47-48 
(2011), "[t]o prove the latter proposition, the defendant bears 
the substantial burden of showing that (1) he had an available, 
substantial ground of defence . . . that would have been pursued 
if he had been correctly advised of the dire immigration 
consequences attendant to accepting the plea bargain; (2) there 
is a reasonable probability that a different plea bargain 
(absent such consequences) could have been negotiated at the 
time; or (3) the presence of special circumstances that support 
the conclusion that he placed, or would have placed, particular 
emphasis on immigration consequences in deciding whether to 
plead guilty" (citations, quotations, and footnote omitted). 
 
 
8 On remand, the motion judge may order a further 
evidentiary hearing, or he may make findings on the basis of the 
evidence presented at the prior hearing.