The following
resources pertaining to Aggravated Felonies are available
on this site. They can also be accessed from the main Premium
Resources page.
Aggravated
Felony -- Category Case Index.
All reported
cases of the BIA and all federal courts holding that a
particular conviction does or does not fall within a particular
aggravated felony category have been summarized and indexed
alphabetically.
Category Defined. This volume uses the phrase "Aggravated
Felony Category," or simply "category,"
to describe the theory or phrase, in the aggravated felony
statute, under which a given criminal conviction may or
may not constitute an aggravated felony. Examples of categories
are "Murder," "Crime of Violence,"
and "Theft Offense."
The Category
Case Index takes all decisions of all courts defining
what is, and is not, an aggravated felony, and organizes
them according to the category they might or might not
fall within. These categories are organized in alphabetical
order. Therefore, looking under "C" for "Crime
of Violence" will produce all decisions construing
that phrase.
For categories
containing many entries, the case summaries are organized
according to the court of decision, in the following order:
Board of
Immigration Appeals
First Circuit
Second Circuit, and so forth, and
District Court.
Within the
group of decisions of a particular court, the decisions
are given in reverse chronological order (most recent
first).
Aggravated
Felony Crime Case Index.
All reported
cases of the BIA and all federal courts holding that a
particular conviction does or does not fall within a particular
aggravated felony category have been summarized and indexed
alphabetically according to the name of the crime.
Crime Case Index. Each decision concerning whether a specific
criminal conviction constitutes an aggravated felony under
a certain category has been labelled according to the
common name of the criminal conviction involved. Examples
of the labels given to criminal convictions are "Murder,"
"Burglary of Vehicle," and "Possession
of Cocaine." Some of these labels are the same as
certain aggravated felony "categories," indexed
in the Category Case Index. This is a coincidence: remember
that the labels contained in the Crime Case Index refer
to the nature of the criminal conviction involved in the
case, rather than the possibly similar label given to
the aggravated felony category to which it is being compared.
The Crime
Case Index takes all decisions of all courts defining
whether a given criminal conviction is, or is not, an
aggravated felony, and organizes them according to the
common name of the specific crime of conviction. These
crime labels are organized in alphabetical order. Therefore,
looking under "C" for "Conspiracy"
will produce all decisions considering whether a conspiracy
conviction constitutes an aggravated felony under any
category.
Cross-references
are included to assist in locating the pertinent case
summary.
Further, it
is possible that some portion of a given statute may meet
the aggravated felony definition, and other portions will
not. This is what is considered a "divisible statute."
If some of the sub-offenses or different means listed
within the same statute would be aggravated felonies,
but some would not, the court will look to the "record
of conviction" to determine which part of the statute
(and therefore which minimum elements) constitute the
defendant's conviction. If the record of conviction does
not establish that the defendant was convicted of an aggravated
felony, the conviction should not trigger removal on this
ground. It is therefore sometimes possible to arrange
a guilty plea to a portion of a divisible statute and
thereby avoid aggravated felony status.
Aggravated
Felony Convictions - Chapter 6, Criminal Defense of Immigrants
(2003)
This Chapter,
"Aggravated Felony Convictions," is Chapter 6 in N. Tooby
& K. Brady, Criminal Defense of Immigrants (National Edition,
2003). It consists of 1300 pages (2 volumes) describing
(a) how to analyze a conviction to tell if it is an aggravated
felony, (b) a crime by crime description of the aggravated
felony categories, and (c) the adverse immigration consequences
triggered by one aggravated felony conviction.
