Litigation » SCOTUS To Hear Bad Legal Advice Case

SCOTUS To Hear Bad Legal Advice Case

December 21, 2016

Staten Island Ferry cruises past the Statue of Liberty on a misty sunset. Manhattan, New York City, United States of America. Square composition.

The U.S. Supreme Court this week agreed to hear a case in which a South Korean immigrant was told by a lawyer to plead guilty, under the faulty understanding that the plea would not lead to deportation. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that lawyers must advise non-citizen clients considering pleading guilty of a crime that they may be deported. Jae Lee moved to the U.S. from South Korea when he was 13 years old, and was a lawful resident but not a citizen. When he learned the truth, he filed a motion to vacate his conviction, claiming he received ineffective assistance of counsel. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said he had suffered no prejudice, as more correct legal advice would not have helped him. But Judge Alice M. Batchelder seemed to hint at the need for Supreme Court review in her ruling. “It is unclear to us why it is in our national interests – much less the interests of justice – to exile a productive member of our society to a country he hasn’t lived in since childhood for committing a relatively small-time drug offense,” she wrote for the court. “But our duty is neither to prosecute nor to pardon; it is simply to say ‘what the law is.’”

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