Lawyer-Comedian Summoned Before the Final Grand Jury

Comedian-actor Greg Giraldo, 44, who recently died of a drug overdose, was a lawyer before he was a stand-up comic.  Belying his scruffy appearance and man-of-the-street manner, the New York native was a graduate of Regis (New York’s elite Jesuit High School), Columbia University, and Harvard Law School.  After a brief career in the New York office of the law firm Skadden Arps, Giraldo abandoned the practice of law for the world of comedy clubs and guest appearances on late-night talk shows.

Three years later (1996), he briefly returned to the law (at least in a manner of speaking) when he won the lead role as a bohemian lawyer in the ABC sit-com, Common Law.  Unfortunately, Common Law was watched by no one other than David Papke and Gordon Hylton, and the series was cancelled after five episodes.  Giraldo was probably best known for the rants that he delivered during his frequent appearances on Comedy Central’s Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Giraldo performed in Milwaukee a number of times during the past two decades.  An obituary that focuses on his early law-related career can be found on the Esquire Magazine website.

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Wrong Advice About Civil Commitment Law Constitutes Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

Last spring, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Padilla v. Kentucky that an attorney’s incorrect advice regarding the deportation consequences of a guilty plea might violate the client’s Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.  Padilla was a surprisingly broadly worded expansion of the Sixth Amendment right into the realm of advice on the collateral consequences of a conviction.  Although Padilla raised more questions than it answered, the decision may prove an extraordinarily important one in light of the proliferation of collateral consequences over the past couple of decades.

Now the Eleventh Circuit has indicated that Padilla does indeed extend beyond deportation advice.  In Bauder v. Dep’t of Corrections (No. 10-10657), the court affirmed a grant of habeas relief based on an attorney’s incorrect advice that the petitioner would not face the possibility of civil commitment as a sexually violent predator if he pled no contest to a stalking charge.

In addition to its extension of the Padilla reasoning to a new collateral consequence, Bauder strikes me as quite significant for at least two reasons.  

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