by William L. Pfeifer, Jr.
April 21, 2010
The United States Supreme Court recently held that an attorney’s duty to provide effective assistance of counsel includes the responsibility of providing accurate advice about the immigration consequences of a guilty plea. Providing incorrect legal advice to an immigrant about the deportation consequences of a guilty plea to drug trafficking charges constitutes ineffective assistance of counsel, and can serve as grounds for setting aside a guilty plea. In Alabama, such a petition would be raised under Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure, which provides Alabama’s method for asserting that a defendant received ineffective assistance of counsel.
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by William L. Pfeifer, Jr.
April 21, 2010
In recent weeks, our office has been contacted more and more by people looking for information about filing a claim against their attorney under Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure. Not to be confused with Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Judicial Administration which deals with child support, Rule 32 of the Alabama Rules of Criminal Procedure provides a method for defendants to challenge their conviction in a trial court. It is normally filed after a defendant has already lost his or her direct appeal of a conviction, though appealing a conviction is not mandatory before filing a Rule 32 petition in most cases.
We have posted several articles about Rule 32 petitions on this blog, but we have not previously posted a copy of Rule 32 itself. Since so many people seem to be looking for information about Rule 32 petitions, we thought it would be useful to place a copy of the rule itself on our website.
The following is a copy of Rule 32 in it’s entirety, including all of the subsections of the Rule and the committee comments issued concerning the Rule. The general form which the rules say a petition should follow is also included in an appendix to the rule. For more information about filing a Rule 32 petition in your own case, please call me at (800) 737-3702 Extension 1 or fill out the Contact form on our site to send me an email message online.
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