Dean Johnson Comments for Southern California Public Radio on Supreme Court Immigration Case
Dean Kevin R. Johnson commented for Southern California Public Radio station KPCC on Chaidez v. United States, a U.S. Supreme Court case involving the Sixth Amendment right to counsel and its application to noncitizens.
The Court ruled in the 2010 case Padilla v. Kentucky that noncitizens have the right to effective counsel regarding immigration consequences of criminal convictions. Roselva Chaidez, a noncitizen who was deported after pleading guilty to mail fraud in 2004, claimed that her attorney's failure to advise her that deportation was a possible consequence of her plea amounted to a violation of rights established in Padilla. On February 20, the Court held that Padilla could not be applied retroactively to her case.
"I think this case is bound to its facts and isn't going to have any general application in terms of telling us what direction immigration law is going to go in the Supreme Court, but it does have very practical impacts on many immigrants with criminal convictions," Dean Johnson said of the decision.
Kevin R. Johnson is Dean and Mabie-Apallas Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o studies at UC Davis School of Law. He is an internationally recognized scholar in the fields of immigration law and policy, refugee law, and civil rights.