Criminal Law Commons^™

Deportation For A Sin: Why Moral Turpitude Is Void For Vagueness, Mary Holper

Mary Holper

A major problem facing noncitizen criminal defendants today is the vagueness of the term “crime involving moral turpitude” (CIMT) in deportation law. The Supreme Court in the 1951 case Jordan v. DeGeorge decided that a statute authorizing deportation for a CIMT was not void for vagueness because courts had long held the noncitizen’s offense, fraud, to be a CIMT, so he was on notice of his likely deportation. I argue that when noncitizens are charged with an offense that case law has not clearly delineated as a CIMT, the term is vague, since the definition used by the agency and …