Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Kyle D. Thompson

Summary

The court held that counsel's failure to inform Thompson that his guilty plea would require mandatory sex-offender registration constituted deficient performance because registration was a serious, definite, automatic, and lifelong consequence of the plea. The court rejected the procedural-bar argument and remanded for the circuit court to determine whether Thompson was prejudiced under the guilty-plea ineffective-assistance standard. The court did not decide whether Thompson could prove that he would rationally have rejected the plea and proceeded to trial.