Court Opinion

ID: 9398227
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-05-30 17:01:27.52176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:19:31.663317
License: Public Domain

NOT FOR PUBLICATION                            FILED
                    UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS                        MAY 30 2023
                                                                      MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
                                                                        U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
                           FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,                       No.    22-55421

                Plaintiff-Appellee,             D.C. No.
                                                2:92-cr-00979-JFW-2
 v.

GLENN ALBERT WIERSMA, AKA                       MEMORANDUM*
Johnell G. Davis,

                Defendant-Appellant.

                   Appeal from the United States District Court
                      for the Central District of California
                    John F. Walter, District Judge, Presiding

                       Argued and Submitted May 11, 2023
                              Pasadena, California

Before: HURWITZ and R. NELSON, Circuit Judges, and KANE,** District Judge.

      Glenn Wiersma appeals from the district court’s denial of a coram nobis

petition. In 1995, Wiersma pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States

in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 286. Over twenty-five years later, he petitioned for coram

      *
             This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
      **
            The Honorable Yvette Kane, United States District Judge for the
Middle District of Pennsylvania, sitting by designation.
nobis relief, seeking to vacate his conviction based on the contention that he received

ineffective assistance of counsel because his previous attorney did not warn that the

conviction rendered him deportable.

      We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291 and review the denial of coram

nobis relief de novo. United States v. Kroytor, 977 F.3d 957, 961 (9th Cir. 2020).

We affirm because Wiersma did not show that his former attorney provided

constitutionally deficient performance.1

      1.     Padilla v. Kentucky instructs that counsel “must inform her client

whether his plea carries a risk of deportation.” 559 U.S. 356, 374 (2010). But

Padilla does not apply retroactively because it announced a “new rule” that broke

with nearly all lower courts—including the Ninth Circuit—which “excluded advice

about collateral matters from the Sixth Amendment’s ambit.” Chaidez v. United

States, 568 U.S. 342, 352 (2013); see United States v. Fry, 322 F.3d 1198, 1200 (9th

Cir. 2003). Thus, Padilla offers no basis for coram nobis relief from Wiersma’s

1995 conviction.

      2.     Before Padilla, we created an exception to our general rule, recognizing

that counsel can provide ineffective assistance by “affirmatively misleading” a client

about immigration consequences. United States v. Kwan, 407 F.3d 1005, 1008 (9th

1
  We GRANT Wiersma’s unopposed motion for judicial notice of various court
records from Wiersma’s prior appeal. Dkt. No. 22.

                                           2                                   22-55421
Cir. 2005), abrogated in part by Padilla, 559 U.S. at 374. For the first time on

appeal, Wiersma contends that his prior lawyer “affirmatively misadvised” him

about his conviction’s immigration consequences.         But Wiersma points to no

affirmative misrepresentation. Quite the contrary, Wiersma’s petition says his

lawyer “never discussed the immigration consequences of the federal plea” with

him.

       Instead, Wiersma relies on a provision of his plea agreement stating that the

government “will not oppose” certain “conditions of release” allowing Wiersma “to

complete [his] schooling by the end of March 1995.” Wiersma contends that this

provision meant to say “March 1996” and governed the conditions of his release

after his incarceration. According to Wiersma, this provision is misleading because

federal law did not allow his release to the community after his incarceration but

rather rendered him automatically deportable.

       Even assuming that this theory was not forfeited, it lacks merit. For one thing,

it requires us to rewrite the plea agreement’s unambiguous terms, which we decline

to do. Moreover, no reasonable reader would consider this provision to be a

misrepresentation about immigration consequences: it is a representation from the

government (not Wiersma’s attorney), makes no mention about immigration status,

and appears to reflect precisely what later occurred.

       3.    Wiersma also argues that his counsel provided ineffective assistance by

                                           3                                   22-55421
violating California professional standards. According to Wiersma, since the 1980s,

California law has required criminal defense attorneys to investigate and advise their

clients about a criminal conviction’s immigration consequences. Wiersma says it

was unreasonable for his attorney not to fulfill these state-law obligations,

particularly when the attorney was also representing Wiersma in state criminal

proceedings. But Wiersma is in federal court seeking federal relief from a federal

conviction. Before Padilla, the availability of a federal constitutional remedy for

ineffective assistance of counsel turned on the “distinction between direct and

collateral consequences,” not on whether a “reasonably competent lawyer [would]

tell a non-citizen client about a guilty plea’s deportation consequences.” Chaidez,

568 U.S. at 357–58 (citing Fry, 322 F.3d at 1200–01). No matter what state law

obligated Wiersma’s attorney to do in state court,2 federal law viewed immigration

consequences as “collateral to the criminal prosecution” and thus outside the Sixth

Amendment’s purview. Id.

      4.     Finally, Wiersma contends that the district court abused its discretion

by resolving the coram nobis petition without an evidentiary hearing. As discussed,

Wiersma’s petition fails as a matter of law, and he does not articulate how further

2
  It is also not obvious that California law even imposed the duty that Wiersma
claims. See, e.g., People v. Vivar, 43 Cal. App. 5th 216, 226 (2019) (“[P]rior to
Padilla, it remained an open question in California whether defense counsel had an
affirmative duty to advise about immigration consequences of a plea.”), reversed on
other grounds, 485 P.3d 425 (Cal. 2021).

                                          4                                   22-55421
factual development would change the outcome. See Runningeagle v. Ryan, 825

F.3d 970, 990 (9th Cir. 2016) (“Where documentary evidence provides a sufficient

basis to decide a petition, the court is within its discretion to deny a full hearing.”).

      AFFIRMED.

                                            5                                     22-55421