Decision rejects claim that deportation trigger was limited to crimes related to interstate commerce

By JESS BRAVIN
May 19, 2016 5:11 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier for the government to deport immigrants who have committed crimes under state laws.

The 5-3 ruling by Justice Elena Kagan clarified immigrants can qualify for removal from the U.S. even if they lack an element in corresponding federal laws that trigger deportation. The decision rejected claims by a Dominican electrician convicted of attempted arson that the deportation trigger was limited to crimes related to interstate commerce.

The Immigration and Nationality Act lists some 80 “aggravated felonies” that justify expedited deportation proceedings, whether the conviction came under federal law or corresponding state or foreign laws. The court, in a ruling that scrambled ideological lines, held that qualifying state laws need not include a link to interstate commerce—a typical element in federal criminal statutes.

The case involved George Luna, who a New York state court sentenced to a day in jail and five years probation for a 1999 third-degree attempted-arson conviction. Immigration officials discovered the conviction seven years later, when Mr. Luna was returning from a trip to the Dominican Republic, and an immigration judge found him subject to the removal provisions—a decision later upheld by a federal appeals court in New York.​

Mr. Luna, a permanent U.S. resident who has lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., since arriving at age 9, argued the state crime wasn’t covered by the deportation provisions because, unlike the federal arson statute, New York law wasn’t limited to buildings and vehicles related to “interstate or foreign commerce.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the majority, said that difference was immaterial.

“The whole point [of the deportation provision] is to make clear that a listed offense should lead to swift removal, no matter whether it violates federal, state or foreign law,” she wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Samuel Alito.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented. “On the majority’s reading, longtime legal permanent residents with convictions for minor state offenses are foreclosed from even appealing to the mercy of the Attorney General,” she wrote. She was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.

Separately, the court unanimously held that the constitutional right to a speedy trial doesn’t apply to sentencing proceedings after conviction.

A Montana man, Brandon Betterman, who spent 14 months in jail awaiting sentencing after his conviction for bail jumping on a domestic assault charge, argued that the delay violated the Sixth Amendment’s speedy-trial guarantee.

Mr. Betterman said that since most criminal prosecutions today are resolved by plea bargains rather than trial, sentencing had become the key courtroom event and should come under the speedy-trial provisions.

The court was unpersuaded. Justice Ginsburg’s unanimous opinion said that regardless of such modern realities, guilt was no longer at issue after a plea bargain and convicts aren’t entitled to the protections the Constitution affords defendants who are presumed innocent.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/supreme-...aws-1463692272