St. Juste v. Commisssioner of Correction


*********************************************** The “officially released” date that appears near the be- ginning of each opinion is the date the opinion will be pub- lished in the Connecticut Law Journal or the date it was released as a slip opinion. The operative date for the be- ginning of all time periods for filing postopinion motions and petitions for certification is the “officially released” date appearing in the opinion. All opinions are subject to modification and technical correction prior to official publication in the Connecticut Reports and Connecticut Appellate Reports. In the event of discrepancies between the advance release version of an opinion and the latest version appearing in the Connecticut Law Journal and subsequently in the Connecticut Reports or Connecticut Appellate Reports, the latest version is to be considered authoritative. The syllabus and procedural history accompanying the opinion as it appears in the Connecticut Law Journal and bound volumes of official reports are copyrighted by the Secretary of the State, State of Connecticut, and may not be reproduced and distributed without the express written permission of the Commission on Official Legal Publica- tions, Judicial Branch, State of Connecticut. *********************************************** JEAN ST. JUSTE v. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION (AC 33424) Lavine, Alvord and Keller, Js. Syllabus The petitioner, who had been convicted in 2007, on a guilty plea, of the crimes of assault in the second degree and possession of a sawed-off shotgun, sought a writ of habeas corpus, claiming that his trial counsel had provided ineffective assistance in failing to inform him that his conviction of assault in the second degree would result in his certain deportation. The habeas court rendered judgment denying the habeas petition, from which the petitioner, on the granting of certification, appealed to this court, which dismissed the appeal as moot. Thereafter, the petitioner, on the granting of certification, appealed to our Supreme Court, which reversed this court’s judgment and remanded the case to this court with direction to consider the merits of the petitioner’s appeal. On appeal, the petitioner claimed that the judgment of the habeas court should be reversed because, under the standard set forth in Padilla v. Kentucky (599 U.S. 356), his trial counsel provided ineffective assistance in failing to advise the petitioner, prior to entering the plea agreement, that his assault conviction would make him subject to automatic deporta- tion. After the parties filed their principal briefs, the United States Supreme Court, in Chaidez v. United States (568 U.S. 342), held that Padilla does not apply retroactively to petitioners whose convictions had become final by the time that the Padilla decision was announced in March, 2010. Held that the habeas court properly denied the habeas petition; under the law as it existed prior to Padilla, the petitioner failed to sustain his burden of demonstrating that his trial counsel performed deficiently, as legal advice concerning the deportation consequences of a guilty plea was not constitutionally guaranteed prior to Padilla, appellate courts in Connecticut having concluded that advice concerning collat- eral consequences such as deportation was not ...

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Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals