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INTRODUCTION
You have nothing to worry about. Relying on his attorney's advice, Jose Padilla decided to plead guilty to felony drug trafficking in Hardin County Circuit Court, in Hardin County, Kentucky.1 As recommended in his plea agreement, Padilla was sentenced to serve a five-year prison term, followed by five years on probation.2 Padilla elected to take the certainty of the bargained-for sentence, rather than take his chances in front of a jury.3
You've been in the country so long, you won't get deported. Jose Padilla came to the United States in the 1960s after being born in Honduras in 1950.4 He became a lawful permanent resident and served honorably in Vietnam.5 At the time of his arrest in 2001, he lived with his family in California and worked as a licensed commercial truck driver.6
But Padilla did have something to worry about. He could- and almost certainly would-get deported. Under federal immigration law, "Any alien who . . . has been convicted of a violation of . . . any law . . . relating to a controlled substance . . . is deportable."7 As discussed below, the development of immigration law in the last half century has made deportation a near-automatic result for aliens convicted of felonies.8 This is especially true when the conviction is for a drug crime.9 Padilla's only remaining avenue for relief was to seek to vacate his guilty plea through a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, for his attorney's failure to warn him about deportation consequences. This laid the groundwork for the Supreme Court to re-evaluate its existing ineffective assistance doctrine as well as the application of that doctrine in the lower state and federal courts.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court held that Padilla's attorney had failed to render effective assistance of counsel by misadvising Padilla about the deportation consequences of his guilty plea.10 Explicitly, the Court's holding was narrow: A criminal defense attorney has the duty to provide accurate advice regarding deportation to a noncitizen client.11 Implicitly, however, the Court caused a major shake-up in Sixth Amendment jurisprudence by undermining the longstanding direct-collateral consequences doctrine followed by lower courts.12 With the longstanding doctrine seemingly marginalized, courts hearing ineffective assistance claims were thrust into a state of flux. Though it...