Tooby's California Post-Conviction Relief for Immigrants

If the client is a drug addict or alcoholic who is not clean and sober, the case is hopeless.  If the client is currently an addict or alcoholic, it does not matter what wonders criminal counsel works in criminal court, or immigration counsel in immigration court.  It is only a matter of time before the client’s fresh misconduct will invalidate all of it.

            If the client has been in recovery for less than a year, the case is difficult, for many relapses occur during this time and courts and prosecutors will rightly regard short-term recovery as somewhat tentative.  If the client has one or more years of recovery, this factor can be portrayed as a favorable equity: The client has turned around a difficult life and has enough of a track record of success that it is reasonable to believe recovery will continue.

            If the client is not an addict or alcoholic, that fact alone is a favorable equity since so many defendants suffer from chemical dependency.  An astonishing proportion of criminal offenses is related to drug addiction or alcoholism. 

            Before investing time -- and the client’s money -- in a difficult effort to erase criminal convictions or sentences, it is prudent to screen the client for current addiction and alcoholism and to reject any case in which it is present unless the client first enters recovery, through a residential or out-patient chemical dependency treatment program, or at least through an intensive twelve-step recovery program.  The track record of successful recovery of a clean and sober client, however, will be an important part of the picture we need to paint for the court and the prosecutor in order to motivate them to assist us in avoiding immigration damage to the client's life.

            When an active addict consulted me, I spent the balance of our time emphasizing the indispensability of recovery to his chances of remaining in the country.  I drove him and his father to the best local chemical dependency recovery in-patient program for evaluation.  The urgency of the immigration threat, in fact, can improve the chances of successful intervention and motivation of the client to enter chemical dependency recovery, perhaps saving his or her life.