Opinion ID: 612832
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Padilla

Text: In Padilla, the Court considered whether defense counsel has an obligation to advise his client that a guilty plea would make him subject to automatic -8- deportation. Jose Padilla had pleaded guilty to drug trafficking in Kentucky state court, and as a lawful permanent resident of the United States, he was subject to virtually mandatory removal because of his drug conviction. Padilla sought state post-conviction relief from his guilty plea, alleging ineffective assistance of counsel. He argued he entered his guilty plea in reliance on his counsel’s erroneous advice that the plea would not affect Padilla’s immigration status. Ultimately, the Kentucky Supreme Court denied Padilla postconviction relief and held the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of effective assistance of counsel did not protect him from erroneous advice regarding collateral consequences of a conviction, such as deportation or removal. 6 The Supreme Court reversed and remanded the case. It found “constitutionally competent counsel would have advised [Padilla] that his conviction for drug distribution made him subject to automatic deportation.” Padilla, 130 S. Ct. at 1478. Before addressing Padilla’s claims, the Court surveyed the development of federal immigration law and noted “deportation or removal is now virtually inevitable for a vast number of noncitizens convicted of crimes.” Id. (citation omitted). Because of this connection between conviction and removal, “deportation is an integral part—indeed, sometimes the most important part—of the penalty that may be imposed on noncitizen defendants who 6 With changes in immigration law, came changes in nomenclature from “deportation” to “removal.” See Padilla, 130 S. Ct. at 1480 n.6. For our purposes, we treat the terms as interchangeable. -9- plead guilty to specified crimes.” Id. (footnote omitted). Therefore, the Court determined the “importance of accurate legal advice for noncitizens accused of crimes has never been more important.” Id. at 1480. The Court turned to Padilla’s claims and considered whether his counsel rendered effective assistance as required by Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984). Before applying Strickland’s familiar two-part test of deficient performance and prejudice, the Court first clarified that it had “never applied a distinction between direct and collateral consequences to define the scope of constitutionally ‘reasonable professional assistance’ required under Strickland.” Padilla, 130 S. Ct. at 1481. The Kentucky Supreme Court had rejected Padilla’s arguments because he claimed ineffective assistance with regard to collateral consequences of his plea—deportation—that the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled were outside the requirements of the Sixth Amendment. 7 The Supreme Court in Padilla stated the “collateral versus direct distinction” was not useful when considering a Strickland claim regarding the risk of deportation. Id. at 1482. Even though deportation proceedings are civil proceedings, based on the “unique nature of deportation,” they were “nevertheless intimately related to the criminal 7 In accord with many other state and federal courts, before Padilla we also held that “deportation remains a collateral consequence of a criminal conviction, and counsel’s failure to advise a criminal defendant of its possibility does not result in a Sixth Amendment deprivation.” Broomes v. Ashcroft, 358 F.3d 1251, 1257 (10th Cir. 2004) abrogated by Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473, 1481 n.9 (2010). -10- process.” Id. at 1481. This “close connection to the criminal process” made deportation “uniquely difficult” to classify as either a direct or collateral consequence. Id. at 1482. Rather than force deportation into one category, the Court concluded that Strickland applied to Padilla’s claims because “advice regarding deportation is not categorically removed from the ambit of the Sixth Amendment right to counsel.” Id. Having determined Strickland applied, the Court then analyzed whether Padilla’s counsel rendered assistance that fell below an objective standard of reasonableness. Prevailing professional norms long required defense counsel to advise their noncitizen clients of the risk of deportation, and with this, the Court stated it was “not a hard case in which to find deficiency.” Id. at 1483. Padilla’s counsel could have consulted the removal statutes and easily determined Padilla’s guilty plea would make his removal virtually mandatory. Instead, his counsel gave Padilla the false assurance that his plea would not affect his immigration status. While immigration consequences may have been clear in Padilla’s case, the Court acknowledged immigration law is a complex subject matter. And in situations where the deportation consequences are unclear, defense counsel would still have a duty to advise a noncitizen client, but only the limited duty to advise him that pending criminal charges may have negative immigration consequences. -11- But, as in Padilla’s case, “when the deportation consequence is truly clear . . . the duty to give correct advice is equally clear.” Id. In sum, the Supreme Court in Padilla held that the seriousness and severity of deportation as a consequence of a guilty plea makes it critical that defense counsel “inform her client whether his plea carries a risk of deportation.” Id. at 1486. Having distilled the Supreme Court’s holding in Padilla, we turn to our Teague analysis and consider whether Padilla is a new rule that retroactively applies to cases on collateral review.