Opinion ID: 678805
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Collateral Attack on Deportation: Coerced Waiver of Appeal

Text: 12 To establish an offense under Sec. 1326, the government must prove that the defendant has been previously deported. 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1326(a)(1). A defendant accused of violating Sec. 1326 may collaterally attack the underlying deportation order if the defendant can show that he or she was deprived of the opportunity for meaningful judicial review of that deportation order. United States v. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. 828, 839, 107 S.Ct. 2148, 2155, 95 L.Ed.2d 772 (1987) (Depriving an alien of the right to have the disposition in a deportation hearing reviewed in a judicial forum requires, at a minimum, that review be made available in any subsequent proceeding in which the result of the deportation proceeding is used to establish an element of a criminal offense.). 13 Smith argues that his right to collaterally attack the underlying deportation under Mendoza-Lopez was improperly foreclosed by the district court. Smith originally contended in his motion to dismiss that the INS's detention of Smith for an uncharged gun offense effectively denied him the opportunity for meaningful judicial review of the deportation proceeding, and therefore, the proceeding cannot properly serve as the basis for his indictment under 8 U.S.C. Sec. 1326. After denying this motion, the court ruled that Smith could not present evidence on this issue at trial. We find no error in the district court's actions. 14 We have recently held that a defendant who deliberately and voluntarily waived his right to appeal a prior deportation order under the advice of counsel, is not deprived of meaningful judicial review and thus may not collaterally attack the deportation order during the Sec. 1326 criminal proceedings. United States v. Smith, 14 F.3d 662, 665 (1st Cir.1994); United States v. Vieira-Candelario, 6 F.3d 12, 15 (1st Cir.1993). In this case, Smith withdrew his appeal of the deportation order under the advice of counsel. Smith argues, however, that the waiver of his appeal was not deliberate and voluntary, but rather was coerced, and thus his case is distinguishable from the situation in Smith and Vieira-Candelario. According to Smith, the INS's action of imprisoning him without allowing him to challenge the reason for his incarceration, unconstitutionally burdened his ability to appeal because it required him to suffer an unlawful imprisonment in order to pursue his right to judicial review. The only way to gain his rightful freedom, Smith argues, was by waiving his appeal and accepting deportation. 15 There are a couple of subsidiary issues surrounding Smith's appeal. The first one is whether any waiver, even if coerced under the most horrendous and fundamentally unfair of circumstances, would preclude a Mendoza-Lopez-type challenge to a subsequent criminal indictment under Sec. 1326. We must assume that there are some circumstances in which a coerced and involuntary waiver of an appeal constitutes a denial of the opportunity for meaningful judicial review and thus cannot serve as a bar, under Smith and Vieira-Candelario, to a collateral challenge of a deportation order. See Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. at 839 n. 17, 107 S.Ct. at 2155 n. 17 (noting that abuses such as coerced confessions, biased judging, and knowing use of perjured testimony could operate, under some circumstances, to deny effective judicial review of administrative determinations). 16 The next question is whether Smith's specific allegations, if true, could constitute sufficiently coercive circumstances so as to effectively deny Smith of meaningful judicial review of his deportation order despite his waiver of an appeal. To the extent Smith alleges that the INS purposefully, as opposed to mistakenly or inadvertently, detained him without probable cause, and without formally charging him or allowing him to subsequently challenge the charges for which he was allegedly detained, for the deliberate purpose of pressuring him into withdrawing his appeal and expediting his deportation, he presents allegations that conceivably might be sufficient to raise a Mendoza-Lopez issue in a subsequent criminal case. Although Smith could still pursue his appeal while in prison, even under such egregious circumstances as the ones he alleges, a court might not be precluded from finding that such circumstances violated the requirement that Smith be afforded meaningful judicial review. 17 That leaves the issue of whether Smith adequately presented the matter to the district court in a way that would allow the court to make a finding that Smith's allegations are true. There is no evidence in the record to support any aspect of Smith's allegations that he was coerced into waiving his appeal of the deportation order. On the contrary, what evidence does exist indicates that Smith was lawfully detained for weapons violations, that he was given two opportunities to challenge his detention, including a hearing before an immigration judge, and that the INS reasonably believed it had cause to detain Smith because Smith had been picked up for previous weapons violations and because he was found with two 9 mm handguns. The fact that no formal gun charges were brought against Smith and the fact that Smith was transferred from Miami to El Paso do not rise to the level of evidence of deliberate coercion by the INS. In sum, there is no evidence to support a finding that Smith was denied meaningful judicial review of his deportation order. 18 Smith nevertheless contends that (1) the district court did not even consider the merits of his coercion claim, and (2) he tried to present evidence in support of his allegations but the district court prevented him from doing so. As an initial matter, the court made no factual findings or explicit legal findings when it denied Smith's motion to dismiss. At that point, however, Smith had presented no evidence--not even an affidavit from Smith himself--to support his claim of coercion by the INS. Smith also failed to request an evidentiary hearing in conjunction with his motion to dismiss. Having thus failed to establish any factual basis for his claim, the district court was warranted in rejecting Smith's motion for dismissal out of hand. See D.Mass.Loc.R. 7.1(A)(2); United States v. Levasseur, 704 F.Supp. 1158, 1168 (D.Mass.1989). 19 Smith argues that even if his motion was properly dismissed, he still had a right to present evidence of the INS's coercion of Smith at trial as an affirmative defense under the Mendoza-Lopez doctrine. We find no support for this contention. As with motions to suppress evidence, alleged constitutional infirmities in matters collateral to the elements of the charged offense involve complex questions of both law and fact that are appropriately determined by the court in a preliminary hearing. Cf. Mendoza-Lopez, 481 U.S. at 832, 107 S.Ct. at 2152 (affirming circuit court opinion that found due process required a pretrial review of the underlying deportation). Although the Ninth Circuit has held that the Mendoza-Lopez issue must go to the jury if the issue has not previously been addressed before trial, United States v. Ibarra, 3 F.3d 1333, 1334 (9th Cir.1993)--a ruling about which we express no opinion at this point--even that opinion foreclosed a re litigation of the issue if already decided by the court on a pretrial motion. Id. In this case, the district court granted a preliminary hearing on the Mendoza-Lopez issue at which Smith had the opportunity to fully and fairly litigate the issue before the court. If Smith failed to request an evidentiary hearing or otherwise failed to take full advantage of the opportunity afforded to him by the district court, such failure was of his own doing and does not, by itself, warrant a second bite at the apple. Under such circumstances, Smith cannot assert a right to relitigate the Mendoza-Lopez issue at trial. Therefore, the court's dismissal of Smith's motion, and its subsequent exclusion of evidence pertaining to Smith's deportation proceedings are affirmed. 20