People v. Kapila CA3

facts resulted in an abuse of discretion. These arguments fail to acknowledge this court’s duty to exercise our independent judgment in reviewing the denial of defendant’s motion. (People v. Vivar (2021) 11 Cal.5th 510, 527 (Vivar).) Having done so, we find defendant has failed to establish he was entitled to relief.

BACKGROUND

Defendant was born in India in August 1995. He immigrated to the United States in July 2010 and was granted legal permanent resident status.

1 A. The Underlying Convictions In October 2014, defendant pled guilty to assault likely to cause great bodily injury (§ 245, subd. (a)(4)) in case No. CRF140211 (the assault case), and in exchange, he was placed on probation and ordered to serve nine days in county jail Defendant pled no contest to criminal threats (§ 422) in 2019 in case No. CRF180002397 (the criminal threats case), and in exchange, the remaining count and several unrelated misdemeanors were dismissed, and defendant was placed on probation. In pertinent part, his initialed plea form stated that he understood the consequences of his plea, including that “if I am not a citizen of the United States, I will be deported from the country, denied…