WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – With the future of thousands of immigrants at stake, the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday considered whether to extend a rule that requires lawyers to tell clients who are not citizens that they can be deported if they plead guilty to crimes.
A decision could prove significant to non-citizens who had ineffective counsel before March 2010, when the court, in Padilla v. Kentucky, said immigrants deserve to be told at least some consequences of guilty pleas.
Federal appeals courts have since divided on whether the decision should apply retroactively.
Yesterday’s case involved Roselva Chaidez, a Mexican citizen and lawful permanent U.S. resident in Chicago.
In 2009, while unsuccessfully trying to become a naturalized citizen, Chaidez disclosed her guilty plea six years earlier for mail fraud in an automobile insurance scheme.
She challenged the government’s decision to remove her from the country, saying her lawyer in the criminal case had never told her that she could be deported for pleading guilty.
But the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago found in August 2011 that the Padilla case introduced a new constitutional rule of law. This would hurt claims such as Chaidez’s because, under a 1989 Supreme Court decision, such new rules do not apply retroactively.
Jeffrey Fisher, a Stanford Law School professor arguing Chaidez’s appeal, told the Supreme Court that Padilla merely confirmed a longstanding rule that criminal defendants deserved reasonably effective counsel who could provide advice. But Justice Antonin Scalia suggested that Fisher’s argument was too sweeping because all decisions draw on earlier law. “We always cite some preexisting principle,” he said.
