Tooby's California Post-Conviction Relief for Immigrants

If the client has outstanding warrants, they must be cleared before the client’s liberty can be obtained during the post-conviction case.  Outstanding warrants also present the client in a terrible light to court and prosecutor when you are seeking a favorable exercise of discretion.  The client’s surrender must be negotiated on the outstanding warrants; the client must be defended on the underlying criminal case, as well as the probation or parole violation matter, and the client must serve any new sentence s/he receives before being released.  Those cases must be handled in such a way as not to incur new immigration disabilities.  This problem makes the whole case much more difficult -- how much more difficult depends on the circumstances.

            If the client violated probation on the case that is triggering adverse immigration consequences, and a warrant is still outstanding, the running of the probation period may have been frozen when the court revoked probation.  In this case, the client may still be "in custody" for habeas corpus purposes, even many years after the violation.  The client may therefore have a habeas corpus vehicle by which to raise claims of legal invalidity of the conviction, which is favorable factor.  See § 6.34, infra.