Criminal defense attorneys representing non-citizen defendants are obligated to provide advice regarding the immigration consequences of a plea or guilty verdict. The Supreme Court’s decision in Padilla made it clear that failure to do so constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel.
Electronic service providers like AOL voluntarily and automatically scan customers’ email transmissions and electronic storage spaces using sophisticated image detection and filtering programs to detect viruses, malware, and illegal images like child pornography. When such scanning reveals that a customer has accessed, transmitted or stored child pornography, the service provider is statutorily required to notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). The NCMEC is obligated by law to then alert federal law enforcement, which can then lead to government investigation and serious criminal charges in state and federal court. Courts have almost uniformly rejected challenges to the search and seizure of child porn discovered in such instances, relying on the private actor doctrine, which excludes searches or seizures conducted by private actors from Fourth Amendment scrutiny.
Our firm represented Dias Kadyrbayev, the young college student charged with obstruction of justice in the Boston Marathon bombing case. The Government sought to introduce statements Kadyrbayev made to law enforcement after allegedly being Mirandized. In the motion to suppress and evidentiary hearing, attorneys Robert G. Stahl and Laura K. Gasiorowski argued that as a non-native speaker of English with no prior experience with the American justice system, Dias did not comprehend his rights under Miranda. Those rights were provided to Kadrybayev only in English, with no Kazakh or Russian translation or interpreter, despite the fact that his limited English proficiency was insufficient to understand the complicated language and syntax of the Miranda rights.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GE) recently agreed to a $5.6 billion dollar settlement for its role in bundling subprime mortgages for sale to investors without disclosing that the mortgages had an unusually high percentage of credit and compliance issues. In doing so, it joins a number of other high profile banks who have admitted wrongdoing with regard to their roles in the mortgage frenzy that led up to the financial crisis in 2008.
If you are a non-citizen facing criminal charges, you face more than just the loss of your liberty. Criminal convictions can have serious immigration consequences. The outcome of a criminal case may affect a non-citizen's ability to remain in the United States, to become a citizen, or to re-enter after leaving to travel or visit family. Certain criminal convictions and/or terms of imprisonment make non-citizen criminal defendants, even those with legal permanent resident status, subject to mandatory detention and removal (deportation).
Laura K. Gasiorowski of Robert G. Stahl Esq. Criminal Defense Lawyers again co-chaired the Pre-Trial Motion Section for the Tulane University School of Law at the nationally known law school's third annual, "Criminal Litigation Boot Camp" in January 2014.