NEW YORK, June 6 (Reuters) - A New York appeals court has granted a new hearing to an Italian man who wants to withdraw a guilty plea after learning that he may be deported as a result of the conviction.

The Appellate Division, Second Department, ruled on Wednesday that defendant Claudio Picca had sufficiently alleged that he had a "rational" reason for seeking to withdraw the plea -- namely, that his attorney never told him that he could face deportation if he was convicted of a felony.

The ruling overturns a decision from Kings County Supreme Court denying Picca's request to withdraw his 2001 plea to attempted criminal sale of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to 3 to 6 years in prison.

Picca, 50, was born in Italy and immigrated to the United States when he was 3 years old. Despite the reduced prison sentence he received as a result of the deal, Picca, a U.S. legal permanent resident, said he would not have pled guilty if he had known that felony convictions could lead to the loss of his immigration status.

The Brooklyn district attorney's office, which handled the prosecution, did not deny that Picca was never informed about the immigration consequence of his plea. But it was Picca's responsibility to tell his attorney that he was a non-citizen, which he failed to do, the DA's office argued.

Picca appealed in 2010, after the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Padilla v. Kentucky. He argued that, under the precedent set by Padilla, his Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel had been violated by his attorney's failure to tell him about the immigration consequences of his plea.

In a unanimous opinion authored by Associate Justice Peter Skelos, the Second Department applied the two-prong test adopted in Padilla to determine whether Picca's Sixth Amendment right had been violated.

The first prong -- whether the attorney's negligence deprived the defendant of reasonable representation -- had been met, the Second Department held. The second prong was whether the court was convinced that the decision to reject the plea bargain would be "rational under the circumstances," under Padilla.

"We conclude that the defendant's averments sufficiently alleged that a decision to reject the plea offer, and take a chance, however slim, of being acquitted after trial, would have been rational," Skelos wrote for the court. "The rationality standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Padilla does not allow the courts to substitute their judgment for that of the defendant.

"In applying that standard, we do not determine whether a decision to reject a plea of guilty was the best choice, but only whether it is a rational one."

Skelos was joined by associate justices Thomas Dickerson, Randall Eng and Sandra Sgroi in the opinion.

A respresentative of the Brooklyn district attorney's office said it was reviewing the situation. An attorney for Picca was not immediately available for comment.

The case is People v. Picca, in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Appellate Division: Second Department, No. 3221/2001.

For the DA: Leonard Joblove and Shulamit Nemec.

For Picca: Lynn Fahey.

(Reporting by Jessica Dye)

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