IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 13-1649
Filed August 13, 2014
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
MALIK DESHION EDWARDS,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, David F.
Staudt (plea), and George L. Stigler (sentencing), Judges.
A juvenile challenges the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence as
cruel and unusual punishment. CONVICTION AFFIRMED, SENTENCE
VACATED, AND CASE REMANDED FOR RESENTENCING.
Joey T. Hoover of Hoover Law Firm, P.L.L.C., Winterset, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Heather Quick, Assistant Attorney
General, Thomas J. Ferguson, County Attorney, and James Katcher, Assistant
County Attorney, for appellee.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Doyle and Mullins, JJ.
2
MULLINS, J.
Malik Edwards appeals the sentence imposed following his Alford1 plea to
the offenses of second-degree robbery, second-degree burglary, and first-degree
theft, all class “C” felonies, pursuant to Iowa Code sections 711.3, 713.5, and
714.2(1) (2011). He was sentenced to ten years on each of the convictions, to
be served concurrently with a mandatory seventy-percent minimum on the
robbery conviction. On appeal he claims the court abused its discretion at
sentencing by failing to consider his status as a juvenile offender and apply the
principles outlined by our supreme court in State v. Pearson, 836 N.W.2d 88
(Iowa 2013).
In Pearson, our supreme court held a sentencing court must hold an
individualized sentencing hearing for a juvenile offender convicted of first-degree
robbery where the offender receives a minimum sentence of thirty-five years
imprisonment without the possibility of parole. 836 N.W.2d at 96. The State
argues Pearson, does not apply to this case because the sentence imposed
here, while it had a mandatory minimum, was not the same lengthy sentence the
supreme court found in Pearson violated the cruel and unusual punishment
clause. The State specifically noted in its brief that the supreme court had not, at
the time, held all mandatory minimums applied to juveniles were unconstitutional
under the Iowa Constitution.
1
See North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 37 (1970) (providing a defendant may
“consent to the imposition of a prison sentence even if he is unwilling or unable to admit
to his participation in the acts constituting the crime”).
3
Our supreme court has now decided that “all mandatory minimum
sentences of imprisonment for youthful offenders are unconstitutional under the
cruel and unusual punishment clause in article I, section 17 of our constitution.”
See State v. Lyle, ___ N.W.2d ___, ___, 2014 WL 3537026, at *20 (Iowa 2014).
The sentencing court in this case imposed the concurrent ten-year sentences
and the seventy-percent mandatory minimum found in section 902.12. In
imposing the sentence the court stated,
The law apparently in this state is in flux as to what a proper
sentence is and how long a juvenile, or a person who was a
juvenile at the time of the commission of the offense, should serve.
But the legislature has decreed the penalties and we’re going to go
with those penalties.[2]
Because the court imposed the mandatory minimum sentence without an
individualized sentencing hearing as is now required by Lyle, we vacate the
sentence imposed and remand the case to the district court for such a hearing.
We make no comment on what that sentence should be, noting the supreme
court stated in Lyle,
It is important to be mindful that the holding in this case does
not prohibit judges from sentencing juveniles to prison for the length
of time identified by the legislature for the crime committed, nor
does it prohibit the legislature from imposing a minimum time that
youthful offenders must serve in prison before being eligible for
2
We note at the time of the sentencing here, September 13, 2013, the legislature had
enacted Iowa Code section 901.5(14) (2013). See 2013 Iowa Acts ch. 42, § 14. This
code section provides the district court with discretion, when sentencing a defendant
who was a juvenile at the time of the offense, to defer judgment and sentence or impose
a suspended sentence, including suspending any mandatory minimum. Neither party
nor the court addressed or applied this new code section to this case, though it was
applicable at the time of sentencing. See Iowa Code § 4.13(2). On appeal Edwards
does not argue for the application of this new statute, and because this case must be
remanded due to the Lyle decision, we need not address this separate error.
4
parole. Article I, section 17 only prohibits the one-size-fits-all
mandatory sentencing for juveniles.
Id. at *22. At resentencing, the court is to “at least consider a sentencing option
other than imprisonment” and “carefully consider all of the circumstances of [this]
case to craft an appropriate sentence and give [Edwards] the individual
sentencing attention [he] deserve[s] and our constitution demands.” Id.
CONVICTION AFFIRMED, SENTENCE VACATED, AND CASE
REMANDED FOR RESENTENCING.