The duty to advise a non-citizen client before a plea, the conviction definition that counts even when a state court says otherwise, the aggravated felony categories and how a sentence length triggers them, crimes involving moral turpitude and the petty offense exception, controlled substance grounds and the single marijuana exception, vacating a conviction for a legal defect rather than for hardship, and bond while a case is pending.
Speedy trial protection comes from two sources with different mechanics: a constitutional standard weighing length, reason, assertion and prejudice, and statutory schemes that count days and exclude specified periods. A transfer into federal immigration custody stalls a case without the defendant doing anything, and the statutory exclusion for an absent or unavailable defendant turns on whether the location is known and whether reasonable efforts to obtain presence were made and recorded.
A crime involving moral turpitude is not defined by statute. Adjudicators look for elements that combine reprehensible conduct with a culpable mental state: fraud or deceit, theft with intent to deprive an owner permanently, and violence aggravated by a weapon, an injury requirement or a specific intent. Recklessness qualifies only narrowly and negligence almost never. Because the classification turns on elements rather than facts, the statute counsel selects decides most of the question.
A modified sentence replaces the original figure only where the modification rests on a defect in the underlying proceeding: an illegal term, a miscalculated range, a procedural error at the hearing. A reduction granted because the term has become burdensome, because the defendant behaved well, or because the original figure carries a collateral consequence is treated as leniency and leaves the original figure standing. The ground the order recites, not its effect, decides which it is.
Three enumerated categories turn on whether loss exceeded a statutory figure rather than on the sentence imposed. The restitution amount ordered at sentencing is part of the judgment and is routinely treated afterward as proof of that loss, even where the parties agreed to it for convenience or to cover conduct in dismissed counts. Separating loss attributable to the count of conviction from restitution agreed across a broader course of conduct is a drafting task, not an accounting one.
A state order undoing a conviction is respected federally only when it rests on a legal or constitutional defect in the underlying proceeding. Orders granted for rehabilitation, good conduct or hardship leave the conviction intact federally, whatever the state calls them. Choosing among a motion to withdraw, a statutory vacatur, coram nobis, a post-conviction petition, a sentence modification and a set-aside is a choice about which finding the order will contain.
Federal adjudicators honor a state vacatur granted for a defect in the underlying proceeding and disregard one granted for hardship or rehabilitation. That distinction is decided by material generated during the criminal case: whether the required advisement appears on the record, how narrowly the factual basis was stated, whether a waiver was taken from a client who understood what was being surrendered, and what the file records about the advice given.
