Justia Massachusetts Supreme Court Opinion Summaries

A Boston police officer witnessed Sylvain engaging in a sexual act with a prostitute. As the officer approached, Sylvain removed plastic baggies from his coat pocket and placed them in his mouth. Believing that the baggies contained "crack" cocaine and fearing overdose, the officer attempted to intercede. Although Sylvain ingested the drugs, a search of his jacket revealed an additional baggie of crack cocaine. The incident took place within 1,000 feet of a child care center. Sylvain, a noncitizen lawfully residing in the U.S., pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance, subjecting him to automatic deportation. After the conviction the Massachusetts Supreme Court held that the rule announced by the U.S. Supreme Court in Padilla v. Kentucky (2010) regarding a criminal defendant's right under the Sixth Amendment to accurate advice about the deportation consequences of a guilty plea, was not a "new" rule and applied retroactively to cases on collateral review. Sylvain sought to vacate his guilty plea, arguing that his attorney erroneously advised him that there would be no deportation consequences. The motion was denied. While Sylvain's appeal was pending, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Chaidez v. United States (2013), holding that Padilla did announce a "new" rule and does not apply retroactively to collateral challenges. The Massachusetts Supreme Court remanded, holding that, as a matter of Massachusetts law, the right enunciated in Padilla was not new and, consequently, defendants whose state law convictions were final after April 1, 1997, may attack their convictions collaterally on Padilla grounds. View "Commonwealth v. Sylvain" on Justia Law

Defendant appealed the denial of his second motion for a new trial in which he sought to vacate guilty pleas he entered in 2005, on the ground that he was deprived of his right of effective assistance of counsel, as that right had recently been explicated in Padilla v. Kentucky. At issue was whether Padilla applied retroactively to defendant's collateral challenge to his convictions and, if so, whether he had demonstrated that he was prejudiced by counsel's shortcomings. The court held that Padilla did apply retroactively on collateral review of guilty pleas obtained after the enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-208, 110 Stat. 3009-546. The court also held that defendant had made an insufficient showing that had he been properly informed of the immigration consequences of his guilty pleas, there was a reasonable probability that the result of the proceeding would have been different. Therefore, the court affirmed the denial of defendant's motion for a new trial.