Collateral Consequences of Conviction

Collateral consequences are legal effects of a criminal judgment other than imprisonment, fine and other aspects of the sentence itself.   Collateral consequences include such things as deportation and disenfranchisement.   While collateral consequences should be calibrated to protect public safety, "If we have a legal system that says if you have been to prison, we're going to make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to have housing and a job, it's a counterproductive policy." Ex-Cons' Sentences don't Always End With Release,  USA Today, July 22, 2007.

Collateral Consequences Policy

Professor Chin has been involved in several aspects of policy regarding collateral consequences.  He served as reporter for the ABACriminal Justice Standards on Collateral Sanctions and Discretionary Disqualification of Convicted Persons (2003), and for the Uniform Collateral Consequences of Conviction Act, promulgated by the Uniform Law Commission in 2009.

Collateral Consequences Research

Much of Professor Chin’s scholarly work addresses collateral consequences.   He has written about the disproportionate effects of collateral consequences on racial minorities. Race, The War on Drugs, and the Collateral Consequences of Criminal Conviction, 6 Iowa Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 253 (2003) (symposium contribution), reprinted in Christopher Mele & Teresa Miller, Civil Penalties, Social Consequences 27 (Routledge 2005).  He also questioned the premise that collateral consequences are civil and regulatory, protecting the public from people who engage in bad conduct, not punishing people again for criminal conviction, by looking at the different treatment of doctors in New York criminally convicted of performing abortions, before Roe v. Wade, and administratively found to have committed illegal abortions.  Are Collateral Sanctions Premised on Conduct or Conviction? The Case of Abortion Doctors, 30 Fordham Urban Law Journal 1685 (2003) (symposium contribution). 

Immigration and the Right to Counsel

Effective Assistance of Counsel and the Consequences of Guilty Pleas, 87 Cornell Law Review 697 (2002) (with Richard W. Holmes, Jr.).   This paper, followed by the Supreme Court in Padilla v. Kentucky,  130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010), contends that the Sixth Amendment right to counsel includes the obligation to advise about serious collateral consequences such as deportation.

A War on Drugs or a War on Immigrants?  Expanding the Definition of ‘Drug Trafficking’ in Determining Aggravated Felon Status for Non-Citizens, 64 Maryland Law Review 875 (2005) (with Jeff Yates and Todd Collins). 

Criminal Disenfranchisement

Reconstruction, Felon Disenfranchisement and the Right to Vote: Did the Fifteenth Amendment Repeal Section 2 of the Fourteenth?, 92 Georgetown Law Journal 259 (2004), reprinted in 21 Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook Ch. 11 (Steven Saltzman, ed., 2005).  This paper contends that the remedy in Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment of reducing the representation of states that did not allow African Americans to vote was impliedly repealed by the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited denial of the right to vote on the basis of race.  Once racial disenfranchisement is prohibited, it makes no sense to suggest that it is permitted at a particular price.

Rehabilitating Unconstitutional Statutes: A Case Study of Cotton v. Fordice, 71 University of Cincinnati Law Review 421 (2003) (faculty symposium).  This paper criticizes the Fifth Circuit’s determination that Mississippi’s felon disenfranchisement provision, which was intended to disenfranchise African Americans, was rehabilitated by being readopted by legislatures elected under the unconstitutional provision, and under circumstances when African Americans were otherwise unconstitutionally denied the right to vote.

Felon Disenfranchisement and Democracy in the Late Jim Crow Era (reviewing Jeff Manza & Christopher Uggen, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (2006)), 5 Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 329 (2007).

Conferences

The Aftermath of Padilla v. Kentucky: A New Era for Plea Bargaining and Sentencing? St. Louis University School of Law, February, 2011.

Collateral Consequences: Who Really Pays the Price for Criminal Justice? 7th Annual Wiley Branton Symposium, Howard University School of Law, Oct. 2010.