Opinion ID: 2815874
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Kwan Under the Teague Framework

Text: Lastly, we must determine whether, as the district court concluded and the government argues, Kwan constituted a new rule of criminal procedure under Teague and thus cannot be applied retroactively. We agree with Chan that Kwan did not establish a new rule under Teague, and we reverse the district court on that basis. The framework we proceed under to determine retroactivity under Teague is clear: first,2 we determine “the date upon which the defendant’s conviction became final.” Lambrix v. Singletary, 520 U.S. 518, 527 (1997). Second, we “survey the legal landscape as it then existed and determine whether a . . . court considering the defendant’s claim at the time his conviction became final would have felt compelled by existing precedent to conclude that the rule he seeks was required by the Constitution.” Id. (internal quotation marks, brackets and citations omitted). Finally, if the rule is a “new rule,” we must determine “whether the relief sought falls within one of the two narrow exceptions to nonretroactivity.” Id. 2 Of course, there is a threshold determination as to whether the rule presented is “a substantive rule or a procedural rule” as “‘Teague by its terms applies only to procedural rules.’” Hayes v. Brown, 399 F.3d 972, 982 (9th Cir. 2005) (en banc) (quoting Bousley v. United States, 523 U.S. 614, 620 (1998)). Neither party has argued that the rule in this case is substantive, and we conclude that because it “does not affect the scope of a substantive criminal statute,” the rule here is clearly procedural. See id. UNITED STATES V. CHAN 11 In this case, Chan’s conviction became final in 2000. Accordingly, we are required to “survey the legal landscape” at that time to determine whether Chan would have been vindicated in seeking to apply the rule in Kwan to her case. “[A] case announces a new rule if the result was not dictated by precedent existing at the time the defendant’s conviction became final.” Chaidez, 133 S. Ct. at 1107 (quoting Teague, 489 U.S. at 301) (internal quotation marks omitted). Further, “a holding is not so dictated . . . unless it would have been ‘apparent to all reasonable jurists.’” Id. (quoting Lambrix, 520 U.S. at 527–28). However, “‘[w]here the beginning point’ of [the court’s] analysis is a rule of ‘general application . . . designed for . . . evaluating a myriad of factual contexts, it will be the infrequent case that yields a result so novel that it forges a new rule.’” Id. (first alteration in original) (quoting Wright v. West, 505 U.S. 277, 309 (1992) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). We find that many factors weigh in favor of concluding that Kwan did not announce a new rule of criminal procedure. First, the language of both Chaidez and Padilla indicates that a court would not be creating a new rule by holding only that defense counsel’s affirmative misrepresentations regarding immigration consequences could constitute an IAC claim. In response to Justice Sotomayor’s dissent in Chaidez, which argued that Padilla itself was not a new rule based on cases such as Kwan, Chaidez, 133 S. Ct. at 1118 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting), the Chaidez majority explained that “those decisions reasoned only that a lawyer may not affirmatively misrepresent his expertise or otherwise actively mislead his 12 UNITED STATES V. CHAN client on any important matter, however related to a criminal prosecution,” id. at 1112 (majority op.). The Court described the rule barring affirmative misrepresentations under Strickland—“regardless whether they concerned deportation or another collateral matter”—as a “limited” rule, which, it concluded, did not apply to Chaidez’s failure-to-advise case. Id. Finally, the Chaidez majority noted that “Padilla would not have created a new rule had it only applied Strickland’s general standard to yet another factual situation—that is, had Padilla merely made clear that a lawyer who neglects to inform a client about the risk of deportation is professionally incompetent.” Id. at 1108. Justice Sotomayor explained that “[t]he majority believes that [Kwan and related cases] did not meaningfully alter the state of the law in the lower courts before Padilla, because they merely applied the age-old principle that a lawyer may not affirmatively mislead a client.” Id. at 1119 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). The distinction between affirmative misrepresentations and failure to advise also is reflected in Padilla. There, the Solicitor General argued that the Court should adopt a more narrow rule, similar to Kwan, whereby counsel’s performance would only be deficient under Strickland if the attorney gave “misadvice” about collateral/immigration consequences. Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae Supporting Affirmance, Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010) (No. 08-651), 2009 WL 2509223, –7, 22–25. Although the Padilla majority rejected this position, 559 U.S. at 369–74, Justice Alito advocated for the adoption of this narrower rule in his concurrence, id. at 384–87 (Alito, J., concurring). Justice Alito characterized the majority’s rule as a “dramatic departure from precedent,” a “major upheaval in Sixth Amendment law,” and a “dramatic expansion of the scope of criminal defense counsel’s duties under the Sixth UNITED STATES V. CHAN 13 Amendment.” Id. at 377, 383. By contrast, Justice Alito explained the Solicitor General’s narrower rule would “not require any upheaval in the law.” Id. at 386. He additionally noted that “the vast majority of the lower courts considering claims of ineffective assistance in the plea context have distinguished between defense counsel who remain silent and defense counsel who give affirmative misadvice.” Id. (internal quotation marks and brackets omitted). Read together, Chaidez and Padilla thus strongly indicate that the Court would not have considered the rule in Kwan to be a new rule. Second, at the time Chan’s conviction became final there was ample support in federal courts for the Kwan rule. By 2000, both courts of appeals to reach the issue had concluded that affirmative misrepresentations regarding immigration consequences could support an IAC claim in certain circumstances. See Downs-Morgan v. United States, 765 F.2d 1534, 1540–41 (11th Cir. 1985); United States v. Briscoe, 432 F.2d 1351, 1353–54 (D.C. Cir. 1970). Additionally, many district courts had reached the same conclusion. See, e.g., United States v. Khalaf, 116 F. Supp. 2d 210, 215 (D. Mass. 1999); see also United States v. Abramian, No. CR 02-00945 MMM, 2014 WL 2586666, at  (C.D. Cal. June 10, 2014) (compiling cases). Several of our sister circuits had also concluded that affirmative misrepresentations regarding parole consequences, also considered to be a “collateral consequence” of a conviction, could establish an IAC claim. See James v. Cain, 56 F.3d 662, 667–69 (5th Cir. 1995); Holmes v. United States, 876 F.2d 1545, 1551–53 (11th Cir. 1989); Sparks v. Sowders, 852 F.2d 882, 885 (6th Cir. 1988); Strader v. Garrison, 611 F.2d 61, 65 (4th Cir. 1979). As such, “the [Kwan] rule was indicated, and was awaiting an instance in which it would be 14 UNITED STATES V. CHAN pronounced.” Kovacs v. United States, 744 F.3d 44, 50 (2d Cir. 2014). Moreover, we need not cite to a particular pre2000 case stating that affirmative misadvice constitutes IAC for Kwan to not be a new rule under Teague because Kwan merely asserted an “age-old principle” that attorneys can be held liable if they affirmatively misadvise their clients. See Chaidez, 133 S. Ct. at 1119 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting); Dyer v. Calderon, 151 F.3d 970, 984 (9th Cir. 1998) (en banc) (“[A] rule needs to be announced for purposes of Teague only if it’s new. What we have here is the antithesis of Teague—a rule so deeply embedded in the fabric of due process that everyone takes it for granted.”). Although we join our colleagues on the Second Circuit in finding pre-Padilla circuit precedent on affirmative misrepresentations to be retroactive, see Kovacs, 744 F.3d at 50–51, we acknowledge that our conclusion puts us at odds with the Seventh Circuit’s ruling in Chavarria v. United States, 739 F.3d 360 (7th Cir. 2014). There, the Seventh Circuit rejected “affirmative misadvice . . . under pre-Padilla law” as a basis for an IAC claim for two reasons: “[F]irst, . . . the distinction between affirmative misadvice and non-advice was not a relevant factor in Padilla,” and “[s]econd, the precedent, pre-Padilla, supporting the application of Strickland in this context is insufficient to satisfy Teague.” Id. at 362. We respectfully disagree with both of these points. First, while Padilla certainly breaks down the barrier between affirmative misrepresentations and failure to advise—at least as to deportation advice—henceforth, Justice Alito’s concurrence and Chaidez strongly suggest that the impact of Padilla would have been far different had the Supreme Court simply adopted the narrower Kwan rule. As such, while the UNITED STATES V. CHAN 15 distinction may be “irrelevant” for future IAC claims, the distinction is relevant for our Teague analysis above. Second, as we explain above, we find ample support in the federal courts pre-Padilla for the rule that affirmative misrepresentations regarding immigration consequences could support IAC claims. As Chaidez noted, Kwan and similar cases “existed happily with precedent” that denied IAC claims based on failure to advise. 133 S. Ct. at 1112. Ultimately, we read the language in Chaidez differently than the Seventh Circuit did in Chavarria, and we agree with the Second Circuit’s analysis in Kovacs. We thus conclude that Kwan did not announce a new rule of criminal procedure under Teague and that the rule in Kwan—affirmative misrepresentations by defense counsel regarding immigration consequences is deficient under Strickland—can support Chan’s IAC claim.