Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

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WI Court of Appeals – District II

Case Name: State of Wisconsin v. Marcos Rosas Villegas

Case No.: 2015AP2162-CR

Officials: Neubauer, C.J., Gundrum and Hagedorn, JJ.

Focus: Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Marcos Rosas Villegas (Villegas) is an illegal immigrant who was brought to the United States from Mexico as a young child. When he was sixteen, he and two others broke into a home brandishing weapons, tied up the occupants, and robbed them. The State filed a delinquency petition charging him with armed robbery party to a crime (PTAC) and three other related offenses. The State also filed, and the court granted, a petition to waive Villegas into adult court. Villegas subsequently pled guilty to armed robbery PTAC.

Villegas sought postconviction relief and was denied. On appeal, he challenges both the juvenile and adult court proceedings. He challenges the juvenile waiver proceedings as both an erroneous exercise of discretion generally, and on the grounds that his counsel provided ineffective assistance. He further maintains that he should be able to withdraw his guilty plea in adult court because the plea colloquy was defective and on the basis that he received ineffective assistance of counsel there as well. His plea withdrawal argument is premised largely on the rationale that his attorney failed to inform him that his plea would render him inadmissible to the United States and ineligible for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

We affirm. Villegas has failed to show that the plea colloquy was defective. Villegas’ attorney also did not perform deficiently when he failed to counsel Villegas about DACA and correctly warned Villegas that inadmissibility was a likely result of the plea. Because his guilty plea was valid, Villegas’ challenges to the juvenile waiver proceedings—neither of which are offered as separate grounds for plea withdrawal—are forfeited under the guilty plea waiver rule.

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Attorney Derek A. Hawkins is the managing partner at Hawkins Law Offices LLC, where he heads up the firm’s startup law practice. He specializes in business formation, corporate governance, intellectual property protection, private equity and venture capital funding and mergers & acquisitions. Check out the website at www.hawkins-lawoffices.com or contact them at 262-737-8825.