Commonwealth v. Clarke

This case is before us on appeal from the denial of the defendant’s second motion for a new trial in which he sought to vacate guilty pleas he entered in 2005, on the ground that he was deprived of his right under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution to the effective assistance of counsel as that right recently has been explicated in Padilla v. Kentucky, 130 S. Ct. 1473 (2010) (Padilla). In Padilla, the United States Supreme Court held that defense counsel’s failure to advise a client that a consequence of his guilty plea likely would be deportation constituted ineffective…