Jean St. Juste v. Warden, State Prison (2011)

HABEAS DECISION

DECISION

THE COURT:  It appears this is a very simple case, and what I mean by simple is in the sense that I think your opening remarks, Ms. Rajan, were correct in that you were asking the court, or first you were telling the court and then asking that I believe the petitioner's statements.

It is very difficult for the court to do that in this case, having heard just very recently, as well as the petitioner's video-conferencing, that his attorney clearly saw all of the problems with this case and they all spelled the word “immigration.”   From Day One, I think, he was alerted to this and did everything he could, from what I can see, to try to avert the ultimate result.

At the stage in which he met the petitioner I think that no one would be able to avert this unless somehow a prosecutor decided that he was going to take a chance on this petitioner and not charge him with what he did, because even though the facts were clear that they supported a charge of assault in the first degree here, that the reduction to assault in the second degree was as far as anyone could go who had an obligation to protect the citizens of the state of Connecticut, and having tried very valiantly to do that and having succeeded, this was the very best that could be done, and I think there's absolutely no question in my mind based on all of the testimony that I've heard that the attorney, Mr. Ignal, was in any way even remotely deficient in what he did.

As evidence of this, I would just point to ․ and I should have said initially I did have the opportunity to review every single one of these exhibits very carefully, and it appeared that, first, and I will take the respondent's exhibit, Exhibit A, the pre-sentence investigative report indicates a number of things about the background of this young man.   Unfortunately, he has had some issues with being able to control his judgment and his temper.   Not to say that he is somebody that cannot be rehabilitated in some way, but he's had issues even before this particular matter, and it is clear, having seen in the report talking about the threatening issue that occurred earlier, the way it was posed in this pre-sentence report was that the eleven months that he was given at the outset for his first crime clearly took into consideration the fact that he was not a citizen of the United States and that just by reading between the lines one would have assumed that that consideration could not have been given a second time, particularly because the crime now has escalated;  similar in nature, but results much worse.   So that's my first comment regarding one of the exhibits.

Secondly, Petitioner's Exhibit Two and Three taken together indicate clearly that this ․ and that is with all of the attachments as to Exhibit Two and Exhibit Three is the decision of Judge Thim having his canvass challenged ․ both of those taken together tells me, and also taking into consideration Attorney Ignal's testimony regarding the many pretrials that he had with Judge Thim and the prosecutor, that this issue was very much in the forefront, it was on everyone's mind, but the way it had to be handled was through either a reduction in sentence or somehow a consideration by the judge that he was going to give simply whatever the lowest mandatory sentence might have been in this case, if any, and let the INS then decide what they were going to do.

However, what appears to finally have been the result is not obviously a pleasant one for the petitioner, but his plea, which is Exhibit Six, when he entered his plea, there was absolutely no indication, and this plea is dated December 17th, 2007.   By then he had had Mr. Ignal's advice, thoroughly discussed, as Mr. Ignal testified, about this issue and the evidence and the charges and all of the pre-trials had been completed by this point, the numerous pre-trials, so we know that by now your client, although he says he didn't ․ he was not advised by Mr. Ignal that he would necessarily be deported if he pled guilty to these charges as they were, or if he went even further, if he decided that he wasn't going to plead guilty and go to trial, that there was a possibility that he would not be deported.   He stated that, but, to me, that's ․ he just isn't credible in making that statement.

So I believe that Attorney Ignal's testimony was totally credible, that he did everything he could, that he met all of the appropriate standards of any attorney practicing criminal law and that certainly there was no way that the court can find that he was deficient.

So, at this instance and at this time, I will have to dismiss the petition and deny it, and I will do that.

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Santos, J.

Santos, Thelma A., J.