The New York Court of Appeals announced an important decision protecting the rights of immigrant criminal defendants in which the court cited a pro bono amicus brief filed by Kramer Levin. In its decision in People v. Peque and two companion cases, the Court of Appeals strengthened due process protections for immigrants accused of crimes by requiring trial courts to notify non-citizens that they may be deported if they plead guilty to a felony.
Kramer Levin filed an amicus brief in the case on behalf of the nonprofit Immigrant Defense Project, which urged the Court to adopt today's holding. The brief focused on showing how modern immigration and criminal law have developed to make deportation a nearly automatic consequence of conviction for the large number of non-citizens who plead guilty to state felonies. The Court specifically cited the brief's discussion of the effects of New York's Institutional Removal Program, a federal-state partnership that seeks to maximize the number of non-citizens in state prison who are expeditiously processed for deportation and released from prison directly to U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement.
The Peque decision comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356 (2010), which held defense counsel must advise non-citizen clients about the risk of deportation before pleading guilty. The Court of Appeals partially overruled its precedent of People v. Ford, 86 N.Y.2d 397 (1995), to the extent Ford held that a trial court's failure to notify a defendant of the possibility of deportation never affects the validity of a defendant's plea. Under today's ruling, a court's failure to provide the constitutionally required notification may allow a plea to be vacated if a defendant can show "a reasonable probability that he or she would not have pleaded guilty and would have gone to trial had the trial court informed the defendant of potential deportation."
In addition to citing the amicus brief Kramer Levin filed, the majority commended the work of all counsel in litigating the appeal: "We commend the defendants' attorneys, the prosecutors and counsel for amicus for their excellent work in bringing a wealth of authorities, research, data and scholarly articles to our attention to assist us in our resolution of these appeals."
The Kramer Levin team on the brief included Craig L. Siegel, Carl D. Duffield, Ashley Miller, and Anna K. Ostrom. The New York Times and New York Law Journal also reported on the case.