How to Report "Adjourned in Contemplation of Dismissal (ACD)" case on N-400 Form?

W

WhoRunTings

Registered Users (C)
Hi all...

I've been a permanent resident for nine years and I am filling out the N-400 to apply for citizenship. I think I fulfill all the criteria, except I have a single blotch on my record, and I am not sure how to answer the questions on the form, since I do not quite understand some of the legal terms.

About the incident: I got arrested four years ago for Criminal Mischief in the 4th degree in upstate New York, released several hours later on bail. I was assigned a court-appointed attorney. I went to court exactly twice after that: once for my arraignment, the other to pay restitution (about $500 dollars in damages), after which I was told that my case was "adjourned in contemplation of dismissal (ACD) for six months." In the words of my court-appointed attorney: if I did not commit any offenses for the next six months, my case would be sealed and it would be as if the case never existed. I was never asked to enter a plea, nor did I enter a plea, and no community service was assigned -- I just paid the restitution for damages. Six months passed and my ACD was dismissed, as expected.

I have the original "certificate of disposition" from the court that I will attach to my N-400 application, but I am not sure how to answer the following questions on the N-400 form... can anyone help?

Here we go:

Q17: Have you ever been CHARGED with committing any crime or offense?

Well presumably yes, since they arrested me (presumably Criminal Mischief is my charge?), but I don't recall the officer or the judge ever using the language "you are being charged with (something or other)" during this process. The court document says nothing about charging me with anything, it just lists my offense.

Q18: Have you ever been CONVICTED of a crime or offense?

I don't recall anyone saying "convicted" during the court proceedings. My court document says "a judgment of conviction and/or disposition has been entered..." and at the bottom it gives some disposition, dismissal, and case sealed details. So am I convicted? Is disposing, dismissing, and sealing the case a conviction? (I mean, it said "and/or" at the top...)

Q19: Have you ever been placed in an alternative sentencing or a rehabilitative program (for example: diversion, deferred prosecution, withheld adjudication, deferred adjudication)?
Q20: Have you ever received a suspended sentence, been placed on probation, or been paroled?

Does my ACD count as any of these? Should I answer YES or NO to these questions?

I would appreciate any help anyone can give me... I called US CIS and they were only able to read the N-400 instructions back to me, which are not helpful for this specific issue. Background research has also turned up nothing. I am probably going to call the New York court today and see if they can answer any of these questions. If so, I'll keep y'all updated.
 
You were charged, but never entered a plea and the charges were eventually dropped.

For question 17, you would answer YES since you were initially charged

For question 18, you would answer NO since the charges were dismissed after deferred decision

For question 19, the answer would be NO since ACD falls under deferred adjudication ( I initially answered YES, but after further review realized that question 19 requires a plea to have been entered).

For question 20, the answer would be NO since you were never sentenced since the charges were dropped.

Make sure to bring the court documents to the interview.
 
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I had a similar situation back when I was in high school. I went to meet up with a friend who attended a different school. While waiting for him to come out, I was harassed by a couple of cops who were assigned to the school. To make a long story short, they gave me a pink desk appearance ticket for trespassing. I went to court and received an ACD. When I filed my N-400, over 10 years have passed since this incident took place. I did everything possible to obtain a record of this ticket, all to no avail. Neither the court nor the police headquarters had any records of it. I ended up not disclosing this ticket at all.

Since you have the paperwork, go ahead and disclose it. I doubt you'll have any problems.
 
WhoRunTings,

This is interesting what you mentioned. Besides the immigration forms, after your unfortunate incident/arrest, have you ever filled out any other forms (job application, credit card etc) where it asked if you had been arrested before? If yes, how'd you answer that?

From what I understand , under ACD you go on living your life as if the arrest never happened, so was curious as to how you were advised.


Thanks,


Stoned!
 
Question 18 is for true conviction in crminal court

Question 19 is for something else which is not conviciton in criminal court but considered to be conviction for immigration purpose.



I am not sure if Question 18 applies to ordinary traffic conviction or not.
 
Thanks everyone! Here is an update: I just called the court where I had this case, and they looked up my case (with terrifying speed -- and I thought it was sealed and hard to get to?). Here is what they said:

Question 17: I was charged, so I say "yes," everyone here and the court are in agreement on that.

Question 18: The court person was very insistent than an ACD is NOT a conviction, so I say "no" to this question. WBH: you seem to have a different opinion about this.

Question 19: I read the question to them and grilled them on this for a while. They said an ACD does not fall under any categories in the question, so they said "no" on Q19. Bobsmyth disagree, so I'm confused now as to what to do.

Question 20: There was no sentencing or entering of a plea, so everyone and the court agrees "no" is the correct answer.

So, Q17 and Q20 are resolved, but I'm still rather uncertain about Q19 (and to a lesser extent Q18). Thoughts?
 
StonedAnt said:
WhoRunTings,

This is interesting what you mentioned. Besides the immigration forms, after your unfortunate incident/arrest, have you ever filled out any other forms (job application, credit card etc) where it asked if you had been arrested before? If yes, how'd you answer that?

From what I understand , under ACD you go on living your life as if the arrest never happened, so was curious as to how you were advised.
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This is exactly what my court-appointed attorney told me. The case is sealed and I do not have to report it to job interviews, etc., except immigration.

Although apparently despite the sealing, anyone claiming to be me can call the court and find out everything about my record after just giving them my name (no SSN, no other info)... I found that out today. :mad:
 
Vorpal said:
I had a similar situation back when I was in high school. I went to meet up with a friend who attended a different school. While waiting for him to come out, I was harassed by a couple of cops who were assigned to the school. To make a long story short, they gave me a pink desk appearance ticket for trespassing. I went to court and received an ACD. When I filed my N-400, over 10 years have passed since this incident took place. I did everything possible to obtain a record of this ticket, all to no avail. Neither the court nor the police headquarters had any records of it. I ended up not disclosing this ticket at all.

Since you have the paperwork, go ahead and disclose it. I doubt you'll have any problems.
Click to expand...

Oh, I am definitely disclosing it. I'm not even particularly worried about this creating problems for my citizenship application, since this was a minor offense, and I have plenty of positive things on my record.

The question I am struggling with is how to answer Q18 and Q19. Maybe I am being way too nitpicky, but I certainly want to streamline the process as much as possible.
 
WhoRunTings said:
This is exactly what my court-appointed attorney told me. The case is sealed and I do not have to report it to job interviews, etc., except immigration.

Although apparently despite the sealing, anyone claiming to be me can call the court and find out everything about my record after just giving them my name (no SSN, no other info)... I found that out today. :mad:
Click to expand...

That is really odd too. A friend of mine sort of went through the same ordeal (ACD stuff) a really long time ago and I forget but for some reason (not immigration related) had to get a court statement that mentioned the dismissal. I tagged along as he could not speak english very well and the lady at the court would not give any information out that easily and checked his identification really thoroughly as the case was "sealed".


Stoned!
 
WhoRunTings said:
Question 19: I read the question to them and grilled them on this for a while. They said an ACD does not fall under any categories in the question, so they said "no" on Q19. Bobsmyth disagree, so I'm confused now as to what to do.
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After reading up further on deferred adjudication, I don't think it applies to your case since you never entered a plea. So for question 19 the answer would be NO since no plea or admission of guilt was ever entered in court. The key words to question 19 is "sentencing" and "probation", both of which require a plea to be entered in the court .


http://www.texasbar.com/Template.cf...EMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
 
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Vorpal said:
According to a document posted on the NYS Courts website (http://www.courts.state.ny.us/ip/womeninthecourts/ImmigrationandDomesticViolence.pdf), an ACD is only considered a conviction for immigration purposes if the defendant admits to all elements of the crime.
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What if during the interview IO asked : "Did you really do it?".
Does an "Yes" answer means "admits to all elements of the crime"?

or this admis to elements of the crime has to be done in criminal court.
 
WBH said:
What if during the interview IO asked : "Did you really do it?".
Does an "Yes" answer means "admits to all elements of the crime"?

or this admis to elements of the crime has to be done in criminal court.
Click to expand...

It has to be done in court via a guilty plea.
 
Oh boy this is getting even more tricky... Vorpal, nice find! Here is the relevant section of the document:

"Adjournments in Contemplation of Dismissal (ACD’s). Adjournments in contemplation of dismissal are usually not convictions for purposes of immigration law. However, the allocution is critical. If the defendant admits all of the elements of the crime on the record, then it becomes a conviction for immigration purposes. Even without admissions on the record, an open ACD may block a person from becoming a lawful permanent resident or a citizen."

The definitions of "allocution" are:
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?gwp=13&s=allocution

They seem to refer to admission of guilt, which I never did. Was never asked for nor entered a plea, never even spoke to the judge except to say my name (lawyer did all the talking). The details of my offense were never mentioned out loud in court, not even by my lawyer or the judge. The lawyer just said "bring the restitution check" and that's it.

Additionally, my ACD is now closed and has been dismissed four years ago. I am strongly leaning towards the "my ACD is not a conviction by ANY definition (immigration or otherwise)" stance.

(However, if paying for a parking or a traffic ticket counts as a "conviction," then I should not be sweating answering Q18 because I would have to say "yes" for my tickets. I am certainly going to report my tickets, but I am not sure if they warrant saying "yes" on Q18. But this is a question for another thread... regardless, it is good to find out whether the ACD itself is a conviction or not, who knows what will come up at the interview...)
 
Bobsmyth said:
After reading up further on deferred adjudication, I don't think it applies to your case since you never entered a plea. So for question 19 the answer would be NO since no plea or admission of guilt was ever entered in court. The key words to question 19 is "sentencing" and "probation", both of which require a plea to be entered in the court .

http://www.texasbar.com/Template.cf...EMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
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That's the opinion with which I was left after calling the New York court about my case. I agree with you. I am answering "no" on Question 19.
 
WhoRunTings said:
I am strongly leaning towards the "my ACD is not a conviction by ANY definition (immigration or otherwise)" stance.

(However, if paying for a parking or a traffic ticket counts as a "conviction," then I should not be sweating answering Q18 because I would have to say "yes" for my tickets. I am certainly going to report my tickets, but I am not sure if they warrant saying "yes" on Q18. But this is a question for another thread... regardless, it is good to find out whether the ACD itself is a conviction or not, who knows what will come up at the interview...)
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If you decide to list your traffic tickets (parking tickets definitely DO NOT need to be listed), list them under question 16 (Have you ever been cited, detained....). Pleading guilty to a traffic ticket results in a civil penalty, not a criminal conviction.
 
Bobsmyth, I am just confused in all this terminology. Is saying "I am not Guilty" means "enetering a plea" too? Or does term "entering plea" refers only to "Guily" "No contest" etc.

thx.

Bobsmyth said:
After reading up further on deferred adjudication, I don't think it applies to your case since you never entered a plea. So for question 19 the answer would be NO since no plea or admission of guilt was ever entered in court. The key words to question 19 is "sentencing" and "probation", both of which require a plea to be entered in the court .


http://www.texasbar.com/Template.cf...EMPLATE=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm
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