Metropolitan News-Enterprise

 

Thursday, June 16, 2022

 

Page 3

 

C.A. Disbelieves Claim of Not Grasping Immigration Consequence of Plea

 

By a MetNews Staff Writer

 

The Court of Appeal for this district yesterday found the protest by a non-citizen that he did not comprehend the deportation consequence of his 2012 guilty plea to a felony drug offense is unworthy of belief.

Justice Kenneth Yegan of Div. Six wrote:

“ ‘I’m screwed.’ ‘I can’t see my life in Mexico.’ These were [appellant’s contemporaneous statements to himself on the day he pled guilty to “sale/transportation/offer to sell” oxycodone in 2012. Both his attorney and the trial court advised him at that time that he would be deported based upon his negotiated plea. Seven years later, his contemporaneous remarks to himself and the two warnings sprang to life as he found himself the subject of deportation proceedings.”

Yegan continued:

“Appellant did not want to live in Mexico in 2012. He does not want to live in Mexico now. We do not fault appellant for wanting to stay in the United States. But…we do fault him for appealing the trial court’s order denying his motion to vacate the plea on the asserted ground that he did not meaningfully understand the immigration consequences of his plea….He knew exactly what he was doing in 2012. The trial court factually so found based upon live-witness testimony. This is a poor platform upon which to predicate an appeal.”

The opinion affirms the denial by Ventura Superior Court Judge Benjamin F. Coats of the denial of Diego Denova Garcia’s motion pursuant to Penal Code §1473.7(a)(1) for an order vacating his guilty plea on the ground that he did not “knowingly accept the actual or potential adverse immigration consequences of a conviction or sentence.” Coats found that Garcia was “well advised and fully understood the likelihood that he would be deported” and that his credibility was “severely lacking.”

Yegan pointed to this 2017 pronouncement by the U.S. Supreme Court in Lee v. United States:

“Courts should not upset a plea solely because of post hoc assertions from a defendant about how he would have pleaded but for his attorney’s deficiencies. Judges should instead look to contemporaneous evidence to substantiate a defendant’s expressed preferences.”

The case is People v. Garcia, 2022 S.O.S. 2521.

 

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