Crimes of Moral Turpitude

(H)Failure to inform the defendant of the nature of the charge and elements of the offense.[128]  The court can look to defendant’s prior life experiences in deciding whether s/he adequately understood the nature of the offense to which a plea was entered.[129]  A plea to illegal re-entry was held invalid, where neither the judge nor the prosecutor described the elements of the charge, the indictment was not read, and the judge did not ask the defendants whether they understood the charges.[130]

[128] Henderson v. Morgan, 426 U.S. 637, 647 (1976).

[129] United States v. Mosley, 173 F.3d 1318 (11th Cir. 1999).

[130] United States v. Lujano-Perez, 274 F.3d 219 (5th Cir. 2001).