Respectfully, I'm not at all sure that this opinion does justice to the reason for the trial court's contrary decision.
I fully understand the equities. Mr. Villalba has been in the United States for 30 years -- since he came here from Mexico when he was 13 years old -- and has a wife and six kids here (two of his, three of hers, and one of theirs). He's been a legal permanent resident since 2014. To deport him to Mexico would surely radically disrupt his life, as well as the lives of his family.
But he has a conviction for domestic violence, to which he pled no contest in 2017. Which makes him subject to mandatory removal. So, pursuant to California law, in 2022 he filed a motion to withdraw his plea, on the theory that he wouldn't have pled guilty if he knew he was subject to being deported as a result.
The prosecution didn't oppose his motion, but the trial court denied it anyway. The Court of Appeal reverses and orders that Mr. Villalba be permitted to withdraw his plea.
I agree with the Court of Appeal that the evidence shows fairly strongly that Mr. Villalba was not given awesome advice by his attorney with regard to the immigration consequences of the plea. His attorney seems to have told him that he might be able to avoid being deported if he retroactively got his sentence reduced, which isn't really true; the guy was basically definitely going to be deported.
On that basis, the Court of Appeal holds that Mr. Villalba gets to withdraw his plea. The Court of Appeal hold that given the bad advice he got from his attorney alongside "the sentencing court’s confusing and contradictory advisement" about the consequences of the plea, Mr. Villalba did not, in fact, know that he would be subject to deportation on the basis of his plea.
Okay. I get it.
But here's the thing: The trial court's advisement was not, in my view, "confusing and contradictory" at all.
The trial court told him he'd be deported. For sure. The only thing that was "conditional" about that was that he'd only be deported if he wasn't a U.S. citizen. Which Mr. Villalba indisputably wasn't. Here's the exact thing that the trial court said at the time when taking his plea:
"I don’t know if this applies to you or not. I don’t need to know. I just need to advise you that if you’re not a citizen of the United States, your plea of no contest will result in your deportation, denial of naturalization, denial of citizenship, denial of reentry into the country.” The court then asked, “Do you understand that?” and defendant replied, “Yes, Your Honor.”"
It's fairly clear to me what the trial court expressly told him. It said: "Look, I don't know if you're a US citizen, and I don't need or want to know; it won't affect my sentence. But what I'm telling you is this: if you're not a citizen, as a result of your plea, you're getting deported. Do you get that?" To which Mr. Villalba said: "Yes."
That's not "confusing and contradictory" to me. It's instead fairly clear.
Now, if the Court of Appeal wanted to, I could see them saying that the contradiction between what Mr. Villalba was told by his lawyer (i.e., that he might not be deported) versus what he was told by the court (i.e., that he would be deported), Mr. Villalba didn't necessarily understand the full consequences of his plea. That I could see. It'd then be a question of fact on remand; what, in fact, did Mr. Villalba think at the time?
The trial court thought that, whatever Mr. Villalba was told by his attorney, he was definitely told by the court that he'd be deported, so as a factual matter, Mr. Villalba knew -- notwithstanding his denials to the contrary. That seems like a factual determination, as to which we generally give the trial court some deference. It's hard for me to see the Court of Appeal saying that as a matter of law that when your attorney tells you one thing (as here) but the trial court tells you a directly different thing (as here) that you necessarily thought that your lawyer was right and the judge was wrong. It is possible? Sure. But not definite. It's a fact issue. Or so I'd have thought.
So, look, maybe Mr. Villalba should be allowed to stay. Again, I see the equities. And, if it were me, I suspect that, as a factfinder, I might well find that Mr. Villalba would not, in fact, have pled no contest if he knew for sure that he'd be deported. Because he had lots of ties to the US, and might have been willing to roll the dice.
But maybe not. The truth is, he drunkenly punched his wife in a restaurant parking lot, and there were plenty of witnesses. That's almost certainly going to get you convicted regardless. Deportation was thus almost certain however he pled, so he might well have thought that a no context plea at least gives him some favor with the judge and reduces his sentence.
Maybe not, of course. But it's a factual question. One that I could see going either way.
But the Court of Appeal sees it otherwise. I'm just not 100% sure that's right. Or really gives sufficient credence to why the trial court here did what it did, or what the trial court in the underlying case meant when it told Mr. Villalba that his plea meant he'd be deported if he wasn't a U.S. citizen.
