Safe Havens

(A)  In General.  The BIA defines recklessness as acting with awareness and conscious disregard of a substantial and unjustifiable risk.  Because a reckless act is committed with conscious disregard of a risk, the BIA has found such reckless intent sufficient to sustain a finding that a noncitizen has been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude.[984]

[984] Matter of Franklin, 20 I. & N. Dec. 867, 871 (BIA 1994), aff’d, 72 F.3d 571 (8th Cir. 1995), cert. den., 519 U.S. 834, 117 S.Ct. 105 (1996) (involuntary manslaughter conviction under Missouri Rev. Stat. § §  562.016(4) and 565.024(1) constitutes a crime involving moral turpitude, where Missouri law requires that the convicted person must have consciously disregarded a substantial and unjustifiable risk, and that such disregard constituted a gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise in the situation), modifying Matter of Ghunaim, 15 I. & N. Dec. 269 (BIA 1975), Matter of Lopez, 13 I. & N. Dec. 725 (BIA 1971), Matter of Sanchez-Marin, 11 I. & N. Dec. 264 (BIA 1965), and Matter of B, 4 I. & N. Dec. 493 (BIA 1951), and overruling Matter of Szegedi, 10 I. & N. Dec. 28 (BIA 1962)); accord, Matter of Medina, 15 I. & N. Dec. 611 (BIA 1976), aff’d sub nom. Medina-Luna v. INS, 547 F.2d 1171 (7th Cir. 1977) (Illinois conviction of aggravated assault under Chapter 38, § 12-2(a)(1) of the Illinois Revised Statutes, held to be a CMT, concluding that moral turpitude can lie in criminally reckless conduct, where the actor must consciously disregard a substantial and unjustifiable risk, and such disregard must constitute a gross deviation from the standard of care which a reasonable person would exercise in the situation); Matter of Wojtkow, 18 I. & N. Dec. 111 (BIA 1981) (conviction for second degree manslaughter under the New York Penal Law for recklessly causing the death of another, constituted a crime involving moral turpitude, since recklessness was defined as in Medina).