In summary
The California Supreme Court threw out a guilty plea from a woman who did not understand that a conviction would jeopardize her immigration status.
At her trial, there’s no question that Angela Hernandez signed a form acknowledging that she could be deported after a criminal conviction. An interpreter certified that they had translated the whole form and her attorney was confident Hernandez understood it.
But the California Supreme Court said in a ruling handed down Thursday that it’s not enough to check a form’s boxes — a defendant has to “meaningfully understand” the legal consequences of a plea deal.
“Were it not for these errors,” the court found, “there is a reasonable probability that she would have rejected the plea offer and either attempted to negotiate a plea with less dire immigration consequences or taken her case to trial.”
Hernandez was charged with two drug offenses in Kern County in 2013. She was a citizen of Mexico but had been a legal permanent resident of the U.S. for 19 years. She was 55-years-old at the time of her arrest, with a father, husband, kids and grandkids in the U.S.
At trial, she pleaded guilty and put her initials on a form that reads: “ALIEN STATUS: I understand that if I am not a Citizen of the United States, my guilty or no contest plea will result in my deportation, exclusion from admission to the United States, and denial of naturalization under the laws of the United States. Deportation is mandatory for some offenses. I have fully discussed this matter with my attorney and understand the serious immigration consequences of my plea.”
Hernandez said on appeal that she agreed to the form but didn’t understand its consequences.
“Well, because if he’s my attorney and he’s telling me, ‘Sign here, initial here,’ I’m going to sign,” Hernandez said in court, according to the ruling. “I was really nervous then too.”
Her plea sent her to jail for 27 days of a 180 day sentence. Two years later, she obtained permission from the state probation department to travel to Mexico. When she returned to Los Angeles International Airport, she was detained by a customs official, who initiated removal proceedings against her.
Since then, Hernandez has been fighting to overturn her past conviction. She argued that her lawyer had been ineffective, something a trial judge and an appeals court both ruled against. But the Supreme Court found legal errors and reversed the decision.
The Supreme Court found that, though Hernandez said “yes” when she agreed to the potential deportation provision in her plea, she didn’t demonstrate that she understood it with her actions.
“Her decisions to seek and obtain permission from the probation department to leave the United States, to travel to Mexico, and to attempt to lawfully reenter through a port of entry support an inference that she did not ‘meaningfully understand’ the immigration consequences of her conviction,” wrote Justice Joshua Groban in the majority opinion.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation urged the court to uphold Hernandez’s conviction. But groups of public defenders and immigration advocates filed briefs arguing that California courts had inconsistent policies regarding how they notify defendants about immigration-related consequences of guilty pleas.
The court directed the 5th District Court of Appeals to send Hernandez’s case back to trial court and vacate her convictions.
In a partial concurrence and partial dissent, Justice Carol Corrigan called for Hernandez to “make a fuller presentation” on remand to a lower court.
“The trial court can resolve factual and credibility issues, then make a proper ruling considering all the relevant evidence,” Corrigan wrote. “If the record produced shows that legal error damaged her ability to meaningfully understand the immigration consequences of her plea and accept them, the motion should be granted. “
