Do Defendants Get Enough Warning About a Guilty Pleas Consequences?
The attention-seeking parents of the Colorado “balloon boy” must not have had their thinking caps on last month when they told police their son was aboard a runaway hot air balloon. But when their misadventure got them hauled into court, they suddenly smartened up. On the advice of counsel, Richard and Mayumi Heene worked out a plea agreement that on Nov. 13 had them confess to different crimes. The father is now a felon, but the mother pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of false reporting. Why? Because she is a Japanese citizen, and if she had pleaded guilty to a felony, a collateral consequence would have been deportation. The Heenes were lucky, but Jose Padilla, whose case went before the U.S. Supreme Court exactly one month earlier, was not. Padilla, a legal U.S. resident born in Honduras, pleaded guilty to an aggravated felony drug charge in Kentucky. His lawyer told him the plea would not get him deported, because he had lived in the United States for decades. The advice was
