This article about a man, Jose Padilla, who plead guilty to drug charges and then faced deportation because, although he has lived in the US for 40 years, he never became a US citizen. "Padilla, a truck driver, sought to withdraw his guilty plea and he claimed ineffective assistance of counsel that violated his constitutional rights." The US Surpreme Court agreed with him.
I have a couple issues with this situation. The first being that he never officially became a citizen. So why is he still entitled to constitutional rights? If his attorneys had told him that if he plead guilty, he may face deporation, would that make drug trafficking any less illegal? The Kentucky Supreme Court said that criminal lawyers have no duty to advise their clients about all possible consequences of a guilty plea, including immigration issues like deportation. Second, while his truck driving job may have been honest, his drug trafficking was not and he needs to face the consequences.
Immigrant wins case over bad legal advice - Yahoo! News
Friday, April 2, 2010
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I completely agreed with the poster’s statements about non-US citizens being entitled to constitutional rights and I found this case to be really perplexing.
ReplyDeleteI found some interesting information on the following webpage:
http://www.slate.com/id/1008367/
The above article named ‘Do Noncitizens Have Constitutional Rights?’ presented some good info. First, according to this article…‘the Bill of Rights applies to everyone, even illegal immigrants. So an immigrant, legal or illegal, prosecuted under the criminal code has the right to due process, a speedy and public trial, and other rights protected by the Fifth and Sixth Amendments. Second, the author Chris Suellentrop states that …‘immigration proceedings are matters of administrative law, not criminal law’. Lastly, the original article noted that the defendant is not an illegal immigrant but he is a legal, permanent resident.
I am under the assumption that Padilla will still be charged with the drug charges and he was only rebutting the deportation or have all the charges been dropped? I am not sure about this one…