Author: CCRC Staff

Editorial staff of the Collateral Consequences Resource Center

Georgia high court extends Padilla to parole eligibility

The Supreme Court of Georgia has extended the doctrine of Padilla v. Kentucky to a failure to advise about parole eligibility.  In Alexander v. State, decided on May 11, a defendant sentenced to a 15-year prison term for child molestation sought to set aside his guilty plea on grounds that his defense counsel had not warned him that, as a recidivist, he would not be eligible for parole.  The Georgia high court agreed that this failure constituted deficient performance under the doctrine of Strickland v. Washington, overruling its 1999 precedent holding that the Sixth Amendment did not require a defense lawyer to advise a client about this “collateral consequence” of conviction. The Georgia court distinguished its 2010 post-Padilla decision declining to find a warning by the court necessary, finding a clear constitutional distinction between defense counsel’s Sixth Amendment obligation to advise a client considering a guilty plea and the court’s due process obligation to warn a defendant in the same situation. At the same time, the court declined to approve a lower court’s earlier extension of Padilla to sex offender registration, reserving for another day the question whether this consequence is “a drastic measure” that is “intimately related” to the […]

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27 Senators urge Obama to “ban the box” in federal hiring

A group of 27 U.S. Senators have written to President Obama urging him to implement “fair chance” hiring in federal government employment.   The Senators — all Democrats, led by Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) — asked the President to issue an executive order directing federal agencies and contractors to postpone inquiry into criminal records until a later point in the hiring process.  The so-called ban-the-box movement in the states has been gaining steam and has been largely bipartisan, with executive orders issued most recently in Georgia and Vermont.  Some of the largest employers in the country, including Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Koch Industries have also stopped asking about prior convictions at the beginning of the job application process. The press release and letter are here.  A January 2015 report from the National Employment Law Project suggests that the details of a presidential executive order may be difficult to work out, given the decentralized nature of federal hiring and the applicability of formal background check requirements to a substantial number of federally-funded jobs.  

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Leaked White House memos detail president’s pardon policy

USA Today has published a White House document detailing President Obama’s policy on granting clemency, including both sentence commutation and post-sentence pardons.  In a memorandum dated July 13, 2010 to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, White House Counsel Robert Bauer “convey[ed] the President’s views” on the exercise of his constitutional pardon power, affirming traditional standards but emphasizing that there are “certain offenses for which a pardon should very rarely, if ever, be granted absent truly exceptional circumstances.”  Among these were “large-scale drug trafficking” in which the applicant had “a significant role,” and financial fraud cases involving “substantial loss to the federal government or its programs.” The memo affirmed the five-year eligibility waiting period for a pardon, overriding a 2001 policy of the Bush Administration (also published for the first time) that imposed an informal 10-year waiting period.  At the same time, it emphasized that the passage of additional time may strengthen an applicant’s case for pardon:

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Vermont becomes the 16th state to ban the box!

On April 22 Vermont became the 16th state to remove the question about criminal record from most state employment applications.   By Executive Order of Governor Peter Shumlin, people applying for most state jobs will not be required to undergo a background check until after they have been deemed qualified and offered an interview.       “When we hire in-state, the first question will not be whether you’ve been convicted or arrested,” Shumlin said. “We will hold that question until the interview and give you a chance to qualify for the job for which you’ve applied.” About 8 percent of people seeking Vermont state jobs checked the criminal history box last year, according to the state Human Resources Commission.   Certain sensitive and law enforcement positions are excepted.

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Increase in Delaware pardons “driven by getting jobs”

Delaware Governor Jack Markell has granted more than 1500 pardons in his six years in office, substantially more than any of his predecessors.  According  to articles by Chris Barrish and Jonathan Starkey in the Delaware News Journal, the “dramatic increase” in the number of people applying for pardon in Delaware has been “driven by getting jobs.”  In defending his record of generous pardoning, Governor Markell noted that the state had adopted 50 new background check requirements for employment in the past several years, and that people with convictions need a governor’s pardon to enable them to overcome the stigma of conviction to obtain employment and stay on the road to rehabilitation.  The two articles are here and here.

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