People v. Carty

• Decision Date: 07 June 2012
• Parties: The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent, v. John CARTY, Also Known as Jean Carty, Appellant.
• Court: New York Supreme Court — Appellate Division

96 A.D.3d 1093

947 N.Y.S.2d 617

2012 N.Y. Slip Op. 04425

The PEOPLE of the State of New York, Respondent,

v.John CARTY, Also Known as Jean Carty, Appellant.

Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, New York.

June 7, 2012.

Norbert A. Higgins, Binghamton, for appellant.

Gerald F. Mollen, District Attorney, Binghamton (Joann Rose Parry of counsel), for respondent.

Before: LAHTINEN, J.P., SPAIN, MALONE JR., KAVANAGH and McCARTHY, JJ.

SPAIN, J.

Appeal, by permission, from an order of the County Court of Broome County (Smith, J.), entered September 17, 2010, which denied defendant's motion pursuant to CPL 440.10 to vacate the judgment convicting him of the crime of attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree, after a hearing.

In 2006, pursuant to a plea agreement, defendant waived indictment and pleaded guilty to one count of attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree; the plea satisfied a superior court information charging him with four counts of criminal sale of a controlled substance in the third degree. The charges stem from a controlled purchase of cocaine by a confidential informant from defendant as part of an investigation into cocaine trafficking by the Village of Endicott police department. Sentenced in July 2007 to one year in jail, defendant did not appeal. After he was detained in September 2009 by immigration officials for removal, i.e. deportation, defendant, a non-United States citizen,¹ moved pursuant to CPL 440.10 to vacate the judgment of conviction on the ground that his plea was not knowing, voluntary and intelligent and he had been denied the effective assistance of counsel because his trial counsel (and County Court) failed to inform him of the immigration consequences of his 2006 guilty plea. County Court held a hearing at which defendant and his trial counsel testified. In a thorough written decision, the court denied defendant's motion to vacate. Defendant now appeals, by permission.

Under federal law, defendant's conviction as a resident alien for violating New York's controlled substance laws renders him “deportable” (8 USC § 1227 [a][2][B][i]; see8 USC § 1101[a][43][B]; People v. Glasgow, 95 A.D.3d 1367, 1368, 943 N.Y.S.2d 674 [2012];People v. Reynoso, 88 A.D.3d 1162, 1163, 931 N.Y.S.2d 430 [2011] ). In Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. ––––, ––––, 130 S.Ct. 1473, 1477 n. 1, 1483, 1486 [2010], on which defendant relies, the United States Supreme Court ruled that where the immigration consequences of a guilty plea are clear, making deportation presumptively mandatory, defense counsel must accurately advise noncitizen clients that their pleas carry the risk of deportation. Under the Sixth Amendment right to counsel ( seeU.S. Const. 6th Amend.), Padilla held that a defense counsel provides constitutionally deficient representation if he or she fails to accurately advise of those immigration consequences or misadvises a noncitizen client, who will be entitled to relief if “ ‘there is a reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different’ ” ( Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. at 1482, quoting Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 [1984];see Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. 52, 58–59, 106 S.Ct. 366, 88 L.Ed.2d 203 [1985] ).

Here, while the Broome County Public Defender was initially assigned to represent defendant on the drug charges, a conflict developed and John Scanlon was then assigned to represent defendant. Scanlon received defendant's file from the Public Defender's office, which included four interview sheets (for the four pending charges) containing background information regarding defendant, all indicating defendant's citizenship as “US.” The parties stipulated at the hearing that a Public Defender intake specialist (who was excused on consent at the hearing and did not testify) filled in the interview sheets with information obtained from defendant.

Defendant testified that he came to the United States from St. Martin as a baby with his mother and has always resided in New York as a permanent resident. He never applied for United States citizenship, even after his mother did so (during his adulthood) and after learning—years prior to his plea—that his brother had been deported to St. Martin. He claimed he believed that he might have become an “automatic citizen” of the United States since he came as an infant. After his arrest in 2006, he met with Scanlon several times and participated in the plea negotiations, but never informed him of his noncitizenship status; they never discussed and he was not aware of the immigration consequences of his guilty plea. Defendant admitted to providing information about himself to the intake specialist who met with him after his arrest, but did not recall telling her he was a “US” citizen, instead claiming that he had indicated that his immigration status was “US Islands”; he did not, however, claim that he had ever mistakenly believed that St. Martin was a United States territory.

Scanlon, an experienced attorney, testified that he met with defendant several times to review the evidence against him, possible defenses, his sentencing exposure and the plea offers, and that defendant never informed him of his permanent residentstatus or raised any questions about the immigration consequences of a drug-related guilty plea. Scanlon did not raise the issue of potential immigration consequences with defendant during the plea negotiations because he had no reason to question defendant's perceived United States citizenship,² as reported in the intake interview sheets. A review of the plea colloquy discloses that the issue was never raised on the record.

County Court properly denied defendant's motion to vacate the judgment of conviction, finding that he had not met his burden of proving either that trial counsel was ineffective ³ or that his plea was not knowing, voluntary and intelligent ( seeCPL 440.30[6], [7] ). To the extent that defendant relies upon Padilla v. Kentucky (supra) to establish that trial counsel's performance—i.e., failure to advise him of the immigration consequences of his plea—was deficient under the Sixth Amendment, we note that Padilla and its progeny presuppose that defense counsel is aware at the time of the plea that a client is a noncitizen and, thus, is duty-bound to accurately advise, and not to misadvise, the client about the clear and serious immigration consequences of a guilty plea ( see Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. at 1484 [In holding that Strickland applies to counsel's failure to advise clients as well as to misadvice, the United States Supreme Court stated: “When attorneys know that their clients face possible exile from this country and separation from their families, they should not be encouraged to say nothing at all.” (emphasis added) ] ).

There was no evidence here that Scanlon was aware that defendantwas a noncitizen, or that he should have been aware, or had any reason to raise the issue of defendant's citizenship. We do not read Padilla, as defendant urges, as establishing an affirmative duty on the part of defense counsel to determine in every case a client's immigration status; while this may be the better practice,⁴ it has not been elevated to a constitutional mandate, and we decline to do so. We also defer to County Court's decision, after observing defendant's testimony,⁵ to credit Scanlon's account that he had no reason to question defendant's citizenship ( see People v. Bodah, 67 A.D.3d 1195, 1196, 889 N.Y.S.2d 117 [2009],lv. denied14 N.Y.3d 838, 901 N.Y.S.2d 145, 927 N.E.2d 566 [2010] ).

We agree that defendant failed to establish that counsel's representation “fell below an objective standard of reasonableness” ( Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. at 688, 104 S.Ct. 2052), i.e., on these facts the prevailing “practice and expectations of the legal community” ( Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. at 1482) did not obligate Scanlon to inquire into defendant's citizenship. Moreover, County Court correctly determined that defendant failed to establish prejudice, i.e., a “reasonable probability that, but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different” ( Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. at 694, 104 S.Ct. 2052), which “focuses on whether counsel's constitutionally ineffective performance affected the outcome of the plea process” ( Hill v. Lockhart, 474 U.S. at 59;see People v. McDonald, 1 N.Y.3d 109, 114, 769 N.Y.S.2d 781, 802 N.E.2d 131 [2003] ). Scanlon, with defendant's active input, negotiated a highly favorable plea to a single reduced felony charge, with one year in jail,⁶ in satisfaction of four class B felonies for which defendant could have received consecutive state prison sentences. Defendant's testimony did not convincingly establish “that a decision to reject the plea bargain would have been rational under the circumstances” ( Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S.Ct. at 1485) or that “counsel's performance rendered the [plea] proceeding fundamentally unfair or left an unreliable result” ( People v. Henry, 95 N.Y.2d 563, 566 n., 721 N.Y.S.2d 577, 744 N.E.2d 112 [2000], citing Lockhart v. Fretwell, 506 U.S. 364, 369–370, 113 S.Ct. 838, 506 U.S. 364 [1993] ). Thus, County Court correctly denied defendant's motion to vacate his judgment of conviction to the extent that it was premised upon the Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel as articulated in Padilla v. Kentucky (supra) and Strickland v. Washington (supra).

Likewise, defendant's state constitutional claim that counsel's failure to investigate his citizenship and advise him of the deportation consequences of his guilty plea deprived him of meaningful representation also lacks merit ( seeN.Y. Const., art. I, § 6; People v. Benevento, 91 N.Y.2d 708, 713, 674 N.Y.S.2d 629, 697 N.E.2d 584 [1998];see also People...