New York Court of Appeals Rules that Judges Must Warn About Deportation in Criminal Cases
The New York Times reports that Court of Appeals of the state of New York, building on teh Supreme Court decision in Padilla v. Kentucky (2009) has ruled that judges must warn immigrant defendants that they face deportation if they plead guilty to a felony. The Court of Appeals overturned its 1995 ruling that deportation is a “collateral consequence” of a guilty plea, and so judges need not warn noncitizen defendants it might happen.
Writing for the majority, Judge Sheila Abdus-Salaam said that times had changed since the mid-1990s, when about 37,000 noncitizens were deported after criminal convictions. That number stood at 188,000 in 2011, Judge Abdus-Salaam wrote, and, with stricter enforcement of immigration laws, deportation has become “an automatic consequence of a guilty plea for most noncitizen defendants.” She said defendants who took plea bargains often found themselves stripped of their jobs, cut off from their family in the United States and returned to a country they hardly remembered.
The opinion can be found here. Download Diaz