Supreme Court to revisit guilty plea and deportation case

The justices of the Supreme Court of the United States may have thought they made it pretty clear in March 2010 that immigrants who have been charged with crimes must be told of the consequences of a guilty plea when they decided Padilla v. Kentucky. But earlier this month they revisited the case and the implications it has had on immigrants in New Jersey and across the country. Though immigrants throughout New Brunswick are told that if they plead guilty to criminal charges they put themselves at risk of deportation, individuals who were charged with crimes prior to March 2010 may not have been and they want to know if Padilla can be applied retroactively.

This recent case on whether Padilla introduced a new constitutional right for immigrants or if it merely reaffirmed a rule that criminal defense attorneys were supposed to abide by is not expected to be decided until June, but it is already stirring up emotions on both sides of the debate. Justice Steven Breyer has said that part of a lawyer's job is to warn his or her clients that pleading guilty to a criminal charge has disastrous effects, implying that Padilla was in no way a new right. On the other hand, Justice Anton Scalia argues that just because Padilla drew on preexisting principles does not mean that it wasn't a new constitutional rule.

The reason why this is such an important debate is that there are a considerable number of people in New Jersey and across the country that may not have been told about the risk of deportation prior to pleading guilty in the years before Padilla. If they were not deported immediately, they will always have that specter of deportation hanging over their head unless the Supreme Court finds that Padilla can be applied retroactively.

The threat of deportation is an understandably scary thing. Not only could it remove someone from his or her family, but it could also keep him or her outside of the United States for years. This can be a lot for someone who had no idea that pleading guilty to a crime would cause such untold trouble.

Source: Reuters, "Supreme Court weighs expanded warnings on deportation risk," Jonathon Stempel, Nov. 1, 2012