And here is an Air Force Times report:
When Rohan Coombs joined the Marine Corps, he never thought one day he would be locked up in an immigration detention center and facing deportation from the country he had vowed to defend. . . .
The estimates are of about 8000 non-U.S. citizens enlisting to serve in the U.S. armed forces in any given year.
Thanks to LawProfsBlog here is a link to an interesting article:
Regulating the Plea-Bargaining Market: From Caveat Emptor to Consumer Protection
Stephanos Bibas, University of Pennsylvania Law School, U of Penn Law School, Public Law Research Paper No. 10-33, California Law Review, Vol. 99, Forthcoming
Swinging a Sledge: The Right to Effective Assistance of Counsel, the Law of Deportations, and Padilla v. Kentucky, August 31, 2010, Joseph Ditkoff
In Padilla v. Kentucky, the Supreme Court decided that the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of the effective assistance of legal counsel requires that counsel inform his client whether his guilty plea in a criminal case carries a risk of deportation. The Court’s decision significantly expands the reach of the traditional Sixth Amendment constitutional protection afforded criminal defendants via the long-established rule of Strickland v. Washington, and, concomitantly, significantly alters the landscape of what courts will consider to be adequate representation in criminal proceedings. The precise contours of the right, thus expanded, will be left to the vagaries of the common law in both state and federal court to map out. This short article will discuss Padilla and some of its forebears and foreshadowings. As will be seen, the Supreme Court has again left prosecutors, defense counsel, and judges with a somewhat muddy decision that leaves the hard work for later, and for others…
In light of the discussion ongoing about Denedo’s end, I thought this might be an interesting read.
It appears that Denedo’s case is over. On 8 September 2010, the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, with C.J. Effron and J. Baker dissenting, denied the filing of a writ appeal petition out of time. The majority writes:
In support of the motion for leave to file writ-appeal petition out of time, Denedo’s counsel explained that he “erroneously believed that this case was governed by Rule 19(a)(1)(B),” which provides sixty days from the date of the decision at the CCA for filing a petition for review with this court.
Appellate defense counsel requests this court suspend Rule 19(e) pursuant to our authority under C.A.A.F. Rule 33, which states “[f]or good cause shown, the Court may suspend any of these rules in a particular case, on application of a party or on its own motion, and may order proceedings in accordance with its direction.” In our view, neither the fact of the previous Supreme Court review of Denedo’s case, nor the Padilla case are relevant to our analysis as to whether there was good cause for a late filing. Counsel’s claim that he erroneously believed that this court imposed a sixty day deadline for the appeal of writ-appeal petitions does not provide us with the requisite good cause for suspending the deadline for filing a writ-appeal.
NMCCA has it’s opinion in United States v. Denedo, the petition for error coram nobis that his been winding its way through the courts, include the United States Supreme Court.
Essentially the court finds that even if there were IAC, petitioner has not established prejudice.
Back to CAAF?
Jenny Roberts, Ignorance Is Effectively Bliss: Collateral Consequences, Silence, and Misinformation in the Guilty-Plea Process, 95 IOWA L. R. 119 (2009).
ABSTRACT: In the 2009–2010 term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide if it matters whether a criminal defense lawyer correctly counsels a client about the fact that the client faces deportation as a result of a guilty plea. Under prevailing constitutional norms in almost every jurisdiction, a lawyer does not have a duty to tell her client about many serious but “collateral” consequences of a guilty plea. Yet, in every jurisdiction that has considered the issue, that very same lawyer will run afoul of her duties if she affirmatively misrepresents a collateral consequence—every jurisdiction, that is, except Kentucky. The Supreme Court of Kentucky recently held that when there is no duty to warn about a consequence because it is collateral, misadvice about that same consequence is not a constitutional violation.
The collision of the collateral-consequences rule, which imposes no duty to warn, and the affirmative-misadvice exception, which imposes a duty to give accurate advice where a lawyer chooses to warn, leads to a perverse incentive structure that signals to defense lawyers (as well as to prosecutors and judges) that it is safest to say nothing at all about “collateral” matters. The Kentucky approach that the Supreme Court will review is equally troubling; it allows false information with no sanction or remedy. A cluttered and contradictory jurisprudence of informational rights in the guilty-plea process sits at this intersection of the collateral-consequences rule and affirmative-misadvice exception.
So-called collateral consequences often overshadow the direct penal sentences in criminal cases. In addition to deportation, courts categorize many other severe consequences as collateral, including involuntary civil commitment, sex-offender registration, and loss of the right to vote, to obtain professional licenses, and to receive public housing and benefits. These consequences touch upon every important area of a convicted person’s life—for the rest of his or her life. They also matter enormously in the United States, which has more than 600,000 individuals exiting the prison system and millions more getting criminal records each year. These individuals enter a society that is struggling to find ways to integrate them despite facing considerable obstacles.
Court-Martial Trial Practice Blog