IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA No. 17-0132 Filed July 18, 2018 MAURICIO RAMIREZ FERNANDEZ, Applicant-Appellant, vs. STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Michael D. Huppert, Judge. Mauricio Ramirez Fernandez appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief. REVERSED AND REMANDED. Angela L. Campbell of Dickey & Campbell Law Firm, PLC, Des Moines, for appellant. Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Benjamin M. Parrott, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee State. Heard by Vaitheswaran, P.J., and Potterfield and Tabor, JJ. 2 TABOR, Judge. Deportation consequences and the duty of criminal defense attorneys again intersect in this case. Mauricio Ramirez Fernandez1 appeals the denial of postconviction relief (PCR), contending his attorney was ineffective for failing to warn him about the immigration and criminal fallout from “turning himself in” to the Iowa Department of Transportation (DOT) for using a false Social Security number to register a vehicle. By doing so, Ramirez obtained a conviction for fourth-degree fraudulent practice. He also faults his attorney for continuing to represent him while listed as a prosecution witness and for advising him to plead guilty to a crime of moral turpitude, rendering him ineligible for cancellation of removal proceedings. Following recent precedent from our supreme court, we conclude no constitutional right to counsel had attached when attorney Michael Said advised Ramirez to reveal incriminating facts to the DOT. But we do find Said operated under an actual conflict of interest in continuing to represent Ramirez throughout the criminal case while listed as a State’s witness and not informing Ramirez of this fact. We further find Said breached a duty in failing to adequately inform Ramirez of the immigration consequences of his plea and Ramirez demonstrated prejudice by rationally insisting he would have stood trial if he knew the reduced charge carried the same prospect for removal as conviction on the original offense. We reverse his conviction and remand for Ramirez to proceed with non-conflicted, competent counsel. 1 Throughout the record, the applicant-appellant is identified by the surname Ramirez, so we will do the same in this opinion. 3 Because we resolve the appeal on the conflict-of-interest and failure-to- advise issues, we need not address Ramirez’s two remaining claims: (1) that counsel was ineffective for not moving to suppress privileged information and (2) that the district court abused its discretion in sustaining an objection to questions concerning Said’s pattern of failing to properly advise clients of known immigration consequences of their criminal convictions. I. Facts and Prior Proceedings Ramirez is a Mexican citizen, who has been living in the United States since 1996. He and his wife, also a Mexican national, have two children, one of whom is an American citizen. In 2011, Ramirez was arrested while at work without proof of authorization to be in the United States. Immigration authorities began removal proceedings against Ramirez, and he retained attorney Said to represent him in his immigration case. Said filed an application for cancellation of removal for Ramirez.2 ...
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