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In a 7–2 ruling, the Supreme Court Wednesday said that lawyers have a constitutional duty to warn noncitizen clients that pleading guilty may result in deportation. The ruling came in the case of Jose Padilla, who was arrested in 2001 and charged with drug trafficking. His lawyer advised Padilla to plead guilty in exchange for a shorter sentence. Padilla immigrated from Honduras 40 years ago and held a green card, and his lawyer told him that a conviction would not affect his immigration status.

The lawyer’s advice was wrong. Drug trafficking is an “aggravated felony,” meaning Padilla lost any benefit of his immigration status and would have no defense should the government choose to deport him. In 2004, Padilla filed a motion in court in Kentucky asking to withdraw his guilty plea, arguing that he would not have plead guilty if he had known about the immigration consequences.

In the Court's ruling today, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that a "constitutionally competent counsel would have advised [Padilla] that his conviction … made him subject to automatic deportation." Stevens noted that deportation law is complex and has changed dramatically in recent years, pointing out that in 1996 Congress eliminated the Attorney General's discretion to stop deportation proceedings, making deportation "practically inevitable" for some offenses. Therefore, even though deportation is not a direct consequence of a conviction, "deportation is an integral part—indeed, sometimes the most important part—of the penalty that may be imposed on noncitizen defendants who plead guilty to specified crimes."

Justice Samuel Alito, writing separately for himself and Chief Justice John Roberts, also focused on the complexity of deportation law but came to a somewhat different conclusion. Alito agreed that the lawyer's bad advice about Padilla's deportation caused constitutional problems, but he said that lawyers should not be required to explain deportation consequences to their clients in all cases. When a lawyer gives bad advice, Alito wrote, that may be grounds for reversing a conviction, but lawyers should not be required to explain all possible consequences of a plea.

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented. Scalia argued that the Constitution mandated that criminal defendants be given a lawyer "for his defense," but the Constitution does not require that the lawyer handle any consequences beyond defending against the criminal charges. Scalia cited Justice Alito's opinion, which listed many of the consequences a criminal may face, including jail time, loss of right to vote, loss of business licenses, and ineligibility to own firearms. Scalia said that a lawyer should not be constitutionally required to advise his client about all effects of a conviction.

Padilla's case will now return to the lower courts, where a judge will have to determine whether Padilla would have been convicted even without his guilty plea.