 NEWS FROM THE COURTS
Griffiths v. INS, First Circuit
In this case, the court ruled that further proceedings were necessary to determine if the state criminal procedure at issue qualified as a conviction for immigration purposes.
Alwyn Griffiths, a permanent resident of the US since 1985 and citizen of Jamaica, was arrested in 1990 in Massachusetts, at age 18, for carrying a firearm without a license. He was sentenced to one year on probation. In 1991, the INS placed him in deportation proceedings. Griffiths conceded deportability, but sought a waiver based on the hardship his deportation would cause to his US citizen family, which included a parent and three children.
In 1993, while the deportation proceedings were pending, Griffiths was granted a new trial, at which the conviction was reduced. No additional punishment was imposed and the conviction was placed “on file.” He then moved to terminate the deportation proceedings, arguing that the new “filed” conviction was not a criminal conviction for immigration purposes. The Immigration Judge denied the motion, and denied a waiver that Griffiths had not sought and failed to address the waiver application he did make. Griffiths appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals.
While the case was pending before the Board, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was passed. This law created the first definition of conviction for immigration purposes. Based on this, the Board dismissed Griffiths’ appeal, finding that the “filed” conviction was sufficient for deportation. Griffiths appealed to the First Circuit.
Before 1996, the First Circuit had considered “filed” convictions such as the one at issue here to not be a sufficient basis for deportation. In the 1996 law, however, Congress made clear its intent to broaden the definition of conviction, and defined it to include not only a formal finding of guilt, but also, in the absence of such a finding, the admission of facts sufficient to warrant a finding of guilty when some form of punishment or restraint is imposed on the person.
The “filed” conviction is, under Massachusetts law, requires the admission of facts sufficient to support a finding of guilt, but is not a final judgment and is not the equivalent of a sentence. Part of the procedure involves the suspension of the defendant’s right to appeal the conviction. Because of this, the “filed” conviction is not final. The Board interpreted the definition of conviction to not require finality, a position that the court found was reasonable, defeating Griffiths’ argument that because it was not final, it could not be a conviction for immigration purposes.
However, Griffiths’ second argument, that because no punishment was imposed after the “filed” conviction it could not be a conviction for immigration purposes, was more difficult. The INS argued that no punishment was imposed because Griffiths had served probation for the first conviction that was later vacated. Nothing in the record, the court found, supported this contention, and it therefore ruled that as the record stood, Griffiths could not be considered to have been convicted for immigration purposes. It therefore remanded the case to the Board for clarification of this issue.
The opinion is available online at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=1st&navby=case&no=001694.
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Hernandez-Mancilla v. INS, Seventh Circuit
In this case, the court found that the conviction for possession of stolen property was an aggravated felony that could be the basis for deportation.
Rafael Hernandez-Mancilla, a permanent resident of the US and citizen of Mexico, pled guilty in 1992 to burglary of a car and possession of stolen property. He was sentenced to six months in prison and four yeas on probation. In 1994 he violated the terms of his probation by committing the same offense. He was found guilty and sentenced to two additional years on probation. In 1996 he again violated his probation and this time was sentenced to six years in prison. After this, the INS placed him in deportation proceedings, charging that he had been convicted of two crimes of moral turpitude and an aggravated felony. Hernandez-Mancilla admitted to the crimes of moral turpitude, but denied the aggravated felony ground. In 1998 an Immigration Judge found that he had been convicted of an aggravated felony and ordered him deported. He appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which affirmed the IJ’s ruling. He then appealed to the Seventh Circuit.
Among other offenses, aggravated felonies include theft offenses for which the possible term of imprisonment is at least one year. The Seventh Circuit had previously ruled that burglary of a car is not a theft offense, and so it addressed whether the conviction for possession of stolen property was. Because immigration law is federal and must be uniform, and because there are 51 criminal codes, for an offense to be an aggravated felony it must fit a generic definition. While Congress did make a “theft offense (including receipt of stolen property)” an aggravated felony, it did not define this further.
The Seventh Circuit found that given the broadness of the language Congress used, plus the fact that “theft” has long encompassed a number of offenses, Congress intended it to be given a broad definition. The court defined it to mean “a taking of property or an exercise of control over property without consent with the criminal intent to deprive the owner of rights and benefits of ownership.” It then found that Hernandez-Mancilla’s conviction for possession of stolen property fit squarely within this definition.
Finding that Hernandez-Mancilla had been convicted of an aggravated felony, the court upheld the deportation order.
The opinion is available online at http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=7th&navby=case&no=993608.
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