NJ Supreme Court Holds Limited Investigation of Defendant’s Citizenship was Not Ineffective Counsel

In State v. Juan C. Hernandez-Peralta (A-41-23/089274) (Decided July 22, 2025), Justice Wainer Apter writing for the majority of the Supreme Court of New Jersey held that sentencing counsel was not constitutionally ineffective for failing to investigate defendant’s citizenship status beyond asking him if he was a United States citizen and receiving an unequivocal “yes,” and therefore not advising him that his plea could make him subject to deportation.

Facts of State v. Hernandez-Peralta

In 2019, defendant Juan Hernandez-Peralta pled guilty to three counts of third-degree burglary and one count of second-degree robbery. During the plea colloquy, the court asked defendant whether he was a United States citizen. Defendant responded, “yes, sir.” The court then asked defendant where he was born. Defendant, who was born in Mexico, replied “I was born in New York.” The court asked defendant whether he understood “everything” about his plea, the recommended sentence, and the plea forms. Defendant responded, “yes.” The court accepted the guilty plea.

Defendant was then interviewed by a probation officer for the presentence report. The report stated that defendant “was born in Mexico and moved to New York with his family as a toddler.” Many fields on the report were left blank. At sentencing, defendant was represented by Carol Wentworth of the Public Defender’s Office. Wentworth stated that she had “received and reviewed” the presentence report with defendant and that the report was “accurate for the purposes of sentencing.” 

Defendant stated that he was satisfied with Wentworth’s representation. The court asked no questions about defendant’s citizenship or place of birth, and the parties raised no information about either at the hearing. The court sentenced defendant in accordance with his plea agreement, which included five years of Recovery Court Probation.

Defendant twice violated the terms of Recovery Court Probation, and at the hearing held after each violation stated that he was born in Mexico. After the second violation, the court terminated defendant’s Recovery Court Probation and sentenced him to five years’ incarceration subject to the No Early Release Act. 

A new judgment of conviction was entered, and defendant did not appeal. In July 2022, defendant filed a petition for post-conviction relief (PCR), alleging ineffective assistance of counsel because he was “not properly informed of the immigration consequences of [his] plea.” The PCR court held evidentiary hearings during which defendant, his plea counsel, and Wentworth testified. 

The PCR court granted defendant’s petition, concluding that plea counsel was effective but sentencing counsel was not. The PCR court found that defendant’s untruthfulness “did not relieve sentencing counsel of the obligation to investigate the discrepancies between his claim to be a U.S. citizen and the contrary information presented in the [presentence report].” 

The PCR court also concluded that defendant established he had been prejudiced by sentencing counsel’s deficient performance under Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984), because defendant proved “to a reasonable probability that he would have rejected the State’s plea offer and not pled guilty had he been properly advised of the adverse immigration consequences.”

The Appellate Division affirmed in part and remanded in part. The appeals court agreed that Wentworth “failed to meet her affirmative duty to advise defendant that deportation was a clear consequence of his guilty plea” but determined, on the prejudice prong, that a remand was necessary for the PCR court to consider whether defendant would be entitled to withdraw his plea.

NJ Supreme Court’s Decision in State v. Hernandez-Peralta

In a 5-2 decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed, holding that under the circumstances, sentencing counsel was not constitutionally ineffective because her performance was not deficient. Justice Rachel Wainer Apter wrote for the majority.

In support, the majority noted that defendant repeatedly represented that he was a U.S. citizen, including to plea counsel, the court, and on his plea agreement form. Additionally, defendant’s presentence report lacked any clear indication of non-citizenship, and plea counsel had already informed defendant that his plea could make him subject to deportation if he was not a U.S. citizen, and defendant chose to plead guilty nonetheless. 

“Neither the plea form, nor the presentence report, nor any other information provided to Wentworth by the time of sentencing clearly called that assertion into question,” Justice Wainer Apter wrote. “Sentencing counsel’s failure to do more than ask her client if he was a U.S. citizen does not constitute deficient performance.”

In reaching its decision, the Court reviewed the law governing ineffective assistance of counsel. As Justice Wainer-Apter explained, a defendant alleging ineffective assistance of counsel must satisfy both prongs of a two-part test: “First, the defendant must show that counsel’s performance was deficient,” and second, the defendant must show that counsel’s “deficient performance prejudiced the defense.”

In this case, the majority found that the test was not satisfied. “Reasonable professional assistance does not require ‘the best of attorneys’ — it simply requires that defendant’s attorney is ‘not so ineffective as to make the idea of a fair trial meaningless,’” Justice Wainer-Apter wrote. “There was no such ineffectiveness here.”

The majority went on to emphasize that sentencing counsel acted reasonably in accepting that defendant was a U.S. citizen based on his repeated assertions that he was. Justice Wainer-Apter wrote:

At the time [she] met defendant and reviewed the presentence report with him, she had already reviewed his plea form, in which defendant had selected ‘Yes’ in response to the question, ‘Are you a citizen of the United States?’ The presentence report contains no information that clearly rebuts that statement, or even reasonably calls it into question. Instead, the information in the report can reasonably be read as consistent with defendant’s statements that he was a U.S. citizen. It therefore did not require sentencing counsel to undertake an investigation beyond asking defendant if he was indeed a U.S. citizen and receiving a response of ‘yes.’

Citing decisions from other jurisdiction, the majority further emphasized that “no court has found that sentencing counsel has a constitutional duty under Strickland or Padilla to independently verify or investigate a client’s citizenship status beyond asking the client if they are a citizen.”

Dissent in State v. Hernandez-Peralta

Justice Michael Noriega authored a dissent, which was joined by Justice Douglas Fasciale. 
“The Sixth Amendment requires more than a box-checking inquiry; it demands a reasonable investigation of the client’s status,” Justice Noriega wrote. He added: “By posing the same question contained in the plea form, counsel merely elicited a response consistent with the form — information she already possessed — without confronting the material fact that had raised concern: how her client obtained legal status if he was born in Mexico.”