State v. Tejeda-Acosta

• Decision Date: 23 May 2013
• Docket Number: No. CR–12–903.,CR–12–903.
• Parties: STATE of Arkansas, Appellant v. Francisco Daniel TEJEDA–ACOSTA, Appellee.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

2013 Ark. 217
427 S.W.3d 673

STATE of Arkansas, Appellant
v.
Francisco Daniel TEJEDA–ACOSTA, Appellee.

No. CR–12–903.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

May 23, 2013.

[427 S.W.3d 674]

Dustin McDaniel, Att'y Gen., by: Valerie Glover Fortner, Ass't Att'y Gen., for appellant.

Chris Flanagin, for appellee.

DONALD L. CORBIN, Justice.

Appellant, the State of Arkansas, appeals the order of the Benton County Circuit Court granting Appellee Francisco Daniel Tejeda–Acosta's petition for writ of error coram nobis and vacating his guilty pleas and sentence. The State's sole point for reversal is that the circuit court erred as a matter of law by expanding the grounds for a writ of error coram nobis to include claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. We conclude that, despite the circuit court's effort to stay within the bounds of established grounds for coram-nobis relief, the result of the circuit court's decision is to improperly expand the grounds for coram-nobis relief to include claims for ineffective assistance of counsel. The circuit court therefore erred as a matter of law, and we reverse the order granting the writ of error coram nobis.

Appellee pleaded guilty on December 6, 2010, in the Benton County Circuit Court to two felonies, first-degree false imprisonment, and aggravated assault. The pleas resulted from an incident where Appellee and three others had taken it upon themselves to recover money stolen from one of them. Appellee entered these guilty pleas after negotiations with the State, in which the State agreed to reduce charges and recommend probation, and Appellee agreed to testify against his codefendants and to have no contact with the victim. At

[427 S.W.3d 675]

a hearing, the circuit court accepted the guilty pleas and imposed the State's recommended sentence of 120 days' imprisonment in the Benton County jail with credit for time served of 233 days and to probation for 96 months as allowed for first offenders in Act 346 of 1975, which is currently codified at Ark.Code Ann. §§ 16–93–301 et seq. (Supp.2011).¹ The plea agreement and a judgment and disposition order were entered of record on December 9, 2010. No direct appeal or postconviction proceedings followed.

Appellee is not a U.S. citizen, but had attained lawful permanent-resident status. As a result of the guilty pleas he tendered in December 2010, officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detained Appellee at his home in Oklahoma on May 18, 2011, and initiated deportation proceedings. ICE issued a notice for Appellee to appear in immigration court, listing false imprisonment and aggravated assault as convictions of crimes of moral turpitude for which he was subject to removal under section 240 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101 et seq. This determination for immigration-law purposes was made notwithstanding that this court has repeatedly recognized that, with exceptions not relevant here, “a plea of guilty or nolo contendere tendered pursuant to Act 346 is not a conviction.” Lynn v. State, 2012 Ark. 6, at 3, 2012 WL 205881.

On November 14, 2011, Appellee filed the instant petition for writ of error coram nobis in the Benton County Circuit Court, asking the court to vacate the entry of his guilty plea due to a lack of advice from counsel about immigration consequences as required under Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 130 S.Ct. 1473, 176 L.Ed.2d 284 (2010). Appellee argued in the petition that he was not informed of any deportation consequences resulting from his guilty pleas and that he was, in fact, facing deportation as a result of his guilty pleas. Appellee argued further that he would never have knowingly entered into the plea agreement if he had been fully advised of the deportation consequences that would result. He thus maintained that a writ of error coram nobis was appropriate relief for him to correct the manifest injustice of having entered what he claimed to be a coerced guilty plea. The circuit court held multiple hearings and eventually granted the petition for a writ of error coram nobis and vacated Appellee's guilty pleas and sentence. This appeal by the State followed.

We have previously allowed the State to appeal an order granting a writ of error coram nobis without requiring the State to satisfy Rule 3 of the Arkansas Rules of Appellate Procedure—Criminal. See, e.g., State v. Larimore, 341 Ark. 397, 17 S.W.3d 87 (2000); see also State v. Burnett, 368 Ark. 625, 249 S.W.3d 141 (2007) (stating that the State need not satisfy Rule 3 in cases that are neither a direct nor interlocutory appeal following a prosecution). The standard of review remains

[427 S.W.3d 676]

whether the trial court abused its discretion in granting or denying the writ. Magby v. State, 348 Ark. 415, 72 S.W.3d 508 (2002) (per curiam); Larimore, 341 Ark. 397, 17 S.W.3d 87.

As its sole point for reversal, the State contends that the circuit court erred as a matter of law in expanding the grounds for a writ of error coram nobis to include claims for ineffective assistance of counsel. The State relies on Estrada v. State, 2011 Ark. 479, 2011 WL 5437538 (per curiam), as settling the very same arguments raised by Appellee in the present case. Appellee responds that the circuit court correctly distinguished Estrada and that the facts of this case direct that it fall within the category of a coerced guilty plea rather than ineffective assistance of counsel.

Estrada, 2011 Ark. 479, 2011 WL 5437538, is remarkably similar to the present case, and we agree with the State that it directs a reversal of the circuit court's decision in this case. In Estrada, the defendant filed a petition for writ of error coram nobis, contending that his trial counsel did not advise him of the possibility that he could be deported if he pleaded guilty to the charge of maintaining a drug premise and that counsel's failure to do so constituted ineffective assistance that should be addressed through the issuance of a writ of error coram nobis. The defendant in Estrada acknowledged that such relief had not been previously available on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, but asserted that it should be available in a case such as his where he was not advised of possible deportation consequences. In so arguing, he, like Appellee in the present case, relied on the Supreme Court's decision in Padilla, 559 U.S. 356, 130 S.Ct. 1473, in which the Court held that a defense counsel's failure to advise his client on the possible immigration consequences of a guilty plea constitutes deficient performance under the ineffective-assistance-of-counsel test in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). In addition to arguing that error coram nobis should be expanded to include a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel under Padilla, like Appellee in the present case, the defendant in Estrada also argued that he was coerced into pleading guilty by counsel's failure to advise him of the possible deportation consequences. This argument was and is, no doubt, an attempt to bring an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim within one of the four accepted categories of error-coram-nobis relief. See, e.g., Grant v. State, 2010 Ark. 286, 365 S.W.3d 894 (per curiam) (explaining that a writ of error coram nobis is available to address certain errors that are found in one of four categories: insanity at the time of trial, a coerced guilty plea, material evidence withheld by the prosecutor, or a third-party confession to the crime during the time between conviction and appeal).

In Estrada, this court rejected the defendant's arguments and refused to expand the grounds for the writ of error coram nobis to include ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims based on Padilla. In so holding, this court acknowledged the Padilla claim, but held steadfast to its prior cases, stating as follows:

[T]his court has held that claims of ineffective assistance of counsel are not cognizable in a coram-nobis proceeding. Such claims are properly brought pursuant to Arkansas Rule of Criminal Procedure 37.1. Ineffective-assistance claims are outside the purview of a coram-nobis proceeding, and a petition for writ of error coram nobis is not a substitute for proceeding under Rule 37.1.

Appellant has in no way met his burden of demonstrating why this court should overrule its prior case law to

[427 S.W.3d 677]

expand the categories of error that may be addressed in a coram-nobis proceeding.

Estrada, 2011 Ark. 479, at 4–5, 2011 WL 5437538 (citations omitted).

The circuit court's findings of fact and conclusions of law are well over thirty pages long. In addition, the circuit court carefully explained aloud his findings and conclusions at the hearing. The circuit court's ultimate conclusion was that Appellee had demonstrated that both prongs of the Strickland test for ineffective assistance of counsel had been satisfied and that counsel's failure to investigate the effect of a guilty plea on the immigration status amounted to a deception resulting in a coerced guilty plea. The circuit court first determined that Appellee was credible in his assertion that the consequence of deportation was of paramount importance to him prior to entering his plea. The circuit court concluded that counsel acted ineffectively in remaining ignorant of the law on immigration consequences of a guilty plea entered under Act 346 despite Appellee's continued credible requests for assurance on the matter. The circuit court was convinced that Appellee would not have agreed to the plea bargain “had he been properly advised that the Arkansas Act 346's benefit of ‘no conviction’ was not applicable to the Immigration & Naturalization Act, and in fact was contrary to its provisions that would define equivalent Act 346 proceedings to be a conviction.” Finally, the...