Supreme Court rules in deportation case

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that lawyers are obligated to tell clients of the risk of deportation should they enter a guilty plea.

In a 7-2 decision, the high court gave a verdict in favor of undocumented immigrant Jose Padilla. Padilla was arrested in 2001 for felony drug trafficking and originally entered a plea of not guilty. He subsequently changed his plea to guilty in exchange for reduced jail time and after his attorney told him that doing so would not affect his immigration status. Padilla’s lawyer was wrong and, thus Padilla was placed by immigration authorities under order for deportation to his native Honduras.

The high court’s ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky overturns a previous verdict against the plaintiff by Kentucky’s Supreme Court. As part of the top tribunal’s majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens said that Padilla’s constitutional rights were broken since he received inadequate legal counsel:

We granted certiorari to decide whether, as a matter of federal law, Padilla's counsel had an obligation to advise him that the offense to which he was pleading guilty would result in his removal from this country. We agree with Padilla that constitutionally competent counsel would have advised him that his conviction for drug distribution made him subject to automatic deportation. Whether he is entitled to relief depends on whether he has been prejudiced, a matter that we do not address.

In his dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia claimed that the “Constitution…is not an all-purpose tool for judicial construction of a perfect world.”

Meanwhile the high court heard arguments in the similar case of Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder. The court must decide if Jose Angel Carachuri-Rosendo can be legally deported to Mexico after pleading guilty a second time to possession of drugs.

Image- ABC News
Online Sources- Reuters, JURIST, Kansas City Star, Los Angeles Times