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Motion to Vacate – California Supreme Court Weighs In
On January 26, 2023, the California Supreme Court issued its ruling in People v. Juventino Espinoza concerning a Motion to Vacate brought under Penal Code § 1473.7(a)(1). For defendants all over California who have brought such a motion, or who will, this opinion should be celebrated for its clarity and brevity (it is only five pages long).
The facts of the case are all too common and the ruling, granting the motion, really is not too much of a surprise, but what the California Supreme Court chose to discuss is well done.
Juventino Espinoza came from Mexico to Northern California at age 13 in 1981. He worked as a farmworker and at age 18 became a lawful permanent resident. At age 22, he married Sandra Rose, a U.S. citizen, and together, the couple had six children here in the United States. Espinoza’s parents, eight siblings, grandchildren and sons-in-law all live in the United States or are lawful permanent residents. Espinoza has lived in the U.S. for over 40 years.
Espinoza’s children went to college and Espinoza worked as a farm manager and then a supervisor at another company before starting his own business.
In 2003, however, Espinoza and several others were arrested for manufacturing methamphetamine and eventually, in Tulare County Superior Court, he pleaded no contest to conspiracy (Penal Code § 182(a)(1)), felony child abuse (Penal Code § 273a(a)), controlling property to manufacture a controlled substance (Health & Safety Code § 11366.5(a)) and possession of a controlled substance (Health & Safety Code § 11350(a)).
At the time, Mr. Espinoza did not speak English and his attorney used a Spanish-speaking assistant to communicate with him before his plea. The assistant told him to plead no contest and “everything was going to be fine.” There was no discussion of any immigration consequences.
When Mr. Espinoza’s plea was taken, the judge told him that a conviction for the offenses he was charged with “may” cause the consequences of deportation, exclusion from admission to the United States or denial of naturalization.
Espinoza, in a declaration attached to his motion to vacate, stated, “I took the warning to be a general one that the court had to give to everyone who pleads guilty. I did not understand it to have applied to me as a legal permanent resident who was in the United States legally . .. “
Following his plea, he was placed on five years of formal probation and had to serve 365 days in county jail. Espinoza had no prior criminal history before this case.
In 2015, when returning on a commercial flight from outside the United States, he was questioned by immigration officials and his permanent resident card was seized. This is when he first found out about the immigration consequences of his plea.
He then filed motions to vacate in 2017, 2018 and 2019, which the trial court denied, each time without an evidentiary hearing. Espinoza appealed his third denial and the Fifth Appellate District affirmed.
Espinoza then appealed to the California Supreme Court, which reversed and granted the motion. The key to the Supreme Court’s ruling seems to be it agreed that Espinoza did not meaningfully understand the immigration consequences of the plea when he entered it and that if he had understood the plea, his objective evidence of deep ties to the United States supports his argument that he would have instead fought for an immigration-neutral resolution or gone to trial as a last resort.
This misunderstanding is the prejudicial error that allows the court to vacate the conviction. People v. Vivar (2021) 11 Cal. 5th 510, 529.
The California Supreme Court’s ruling, however, acknowledges things that defendants have argued for years, but courts have seemed hesitant to acknowledge, such as:
- Espinoza’s biographical history, which described over 20 years of living in the United States before the conviction, including 30 letters from family, friends community members, clients and employers documenting his community connections and work history, which the court considered in the “totality of the circumstances (Vivar, supra, 11 Cal. 5th at p. 529);
- The court found it credible that Espinoza did not know about the adverse immigration consequences because after the convictions, “rather than living in hiding, Espinoza started his own business, joined community organizations and became well-known in his local community.” Moreover, Espinoza took an international commercial flight to the United States, which predictably required subjecting himself to the scrutiny of United States Immigration officials, which is not consistent with the behavior of a person who understood that his conviction effectively ended his lawful resident status. See People v. Alatorre (2021) 70 Cal. App. 4th 747, 770 (“It goes without saying that someone who understood his criminal convictions made him automatically deportable would not voluntarily contact immigration authorities and advise them of his presence in this country.”); and
- The court contrasted Espinoza’s situation with People v. Bravo (2021) 69 Cal. App. 5th 1063, 1077, where the court found defendant Bravo’s connection to the United States too tenuous to support an inference that he did not knowingly accept a plea deal with adverse immigration consequences because Bravo had lived in the U.S. four and a half years at the time of his plea (at age 18), but he was charged with domestic violence against the mother of his child, the very basis for his alleged ties to the United States.
For more information about a motion to vacate for immigration consequences under Penal Code § 1473.7(a)(1), please click on the following articles:
