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Rollins v. State1/12/2004
January 15, 2004 - Substitute opinion issued. Only change is that footnote has been added to paragraph one.
This Court granted appellant Michelle Yearwood Rollins's application for a certificate of probable cause to appeal the denial of her petition for habeas corpus relief. In her petition, Rollins alleged she received ineffective assistance from counsel in connection with her entry in 1989 of a First Offender guilty plea to charges that she violated the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. Having reviewed the record, we conclude that Rollins's plea was based upon the affirmative misrepresentations of counsel made in response to her inquiries about the collateral consequences of a First Offender plea.
We also conclude it is reasonably probable that were it not for counsel's misrepresentations, Rollins would not have pled guilty but rather would have insisted upon proceeding to trial. Therefore, because Rollins's 1989 plea was the result of ineffective assistance from counsel, we reverse.
As found by the habeas court, in 1989 Rollins, a native of Barbados and a resident alien, pled nolo contendere to a charge of DUI (alcohol) and entered a First Offender guilty plea to a charge of violating the Georgia Controlled Substances Act. The latter charge was based upon an allegation that after her arrest for DUI, trace amounts of cocaine were discovered on a dollar bill found in Rollins's purse. At her plea hearing, Rollins denied any knowledge of the cocaine trace and asserted that she had no idea how the residue came to be on money found in her purse. However, because she did not dispute that the dollar bill had been taken from her purse, she entered a plea on the advice of counsel and was treated as a First Offender.
In the years following her First Offender plea, Rollins earned an Associate degree from Clayton State College, a double-major Bachelor degree from Georgia State University, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Georgia. As the wife of an American citizen for the more than ten years, Rollins was officially accorded status as a legal resident alien. After graduating from law school, Rollins passed the Florida Bar Examination and the State of Florida offered her employment as a prosecutor. However, as part of its assessment of Rollins's fitness to practice law, the Florida State Bar requested and obtained an unsealed copy of Rollins's 1989 First Offender guilty plea. As a result, the State Bar of Florida is holding in abeyance its decision whether to admit Rollins to the practice of law and the Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) has instituted deportation proceedings against her.
Rollins sought relief in the habeas court, claiming that her 1989 guilty plea was invalid because her trial counsel informed her that if she entered a plea under the First Offender Act, there would be no negative consequences regarding either her desire to become a lawyer or her immigration status. The habeas court denied relief, ruling that Rollins's counsel had no obligation to inform her of the collateral consequences of her plea.
1. The habeas court erred by failing to distinguish between a lawyer's failure to inform his client of the collateral consequences attending a guilty plea and the affirmative misrepresentation of such consequences. Our precedent establishes that there is no constitutional requirement that a defendant be advised of collateral consequences in order for her guilty plea to be valid. However, this particular appeal does not involve counsel's failure to inform, but rather concerns counsel's affirmative act of giving misinformation in response to a client's specific inquiries.
At the
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