IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 14-0649
Filed December 10, 2014
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
CORNELL MCGINNIS,
Defendant-Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Todd A. Geer,
Judge.
Cornell McGinnis appeals his sentence of incarceration following his guilty
plea to willful injury. AFFIRMED.
Mark C. Smith, State Appellate Defender, and Shellie L. Knipfer, Assistant
Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Tyler J. Buller, Assistant Attorney
General, Thomas J. Ferguson, County Attorney, and James Katcher, Assistant
County Attorney, for appellee.
Considered by Danilson, C.J., and Doyle and Tabor, JJ.
2
DOYLE, J.
McGinnis entered an Alford plea of guilty1 to willful injury causing bodily
injury. The district court accepted the plea and adjudged McGinnis guilty of
willful injury in violation of Iowa Code section 708.4(2) (2013). At the sentencing
hearing, McGinnis requested a suspended sentence. He was sentenced to an
indeterminate term of no more than five years in prison. On appeal, McGinnis
challenges his sentence, contending the district court abused its discretion in
sentencing him to prison. Specifically, McGinnis claims (1) his “criminal history in
recent years is not as egregious as the court makes it sound” and (2) the court
failed to account for his deteriorating health.
Our review of the district court’s sentencing decision is for the correction of
errors at law. State v. Thomas, 547 N.W.2d 223, 225 (Iowa 1996). The decision
“to impose a sentence within statutory limits is cloaked with a strong presumption
in its favor.” State v. Formaro, 638 N.W.2d 720, 724 (Iowa 2002). A sentence
will not be upset on appeal “unless the defendant demonstrates an abuse of trial
court discretion or a defect in the sentencing procedure, such as trial court
consideration of impermissible factors.” State v. Grandberry, 619 N.W.2d 399,
401 (Iowa 2000). “An abuse of discretion is found only when the sentencing
court exercises its discretion on grounds or for reasons clearly untenable or to an
extent clearly unreasonable.” Thomas, 547 N.W.2d at 225. “In exercising its
discretion, the district court is to weigh all pertinent matters in determining a
proper sentence, including the nature of the offense, the attending
1
See North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 37 (1970) (upholding a variation of a guilty
plea in which a defendant does not admit participation in the acts constituting the crime
but consents to the imposition of a sentence).
3
circumstances, the defendant’s age, character, and propensities or chances for
reform.” State v. Johnson, 513 N.W.2d 717, 719 (Iowa 1994). Although “[a]
sentencing court has a duty to consider all the circumstances of a particular
case,” it is not “required to specifically acknowledge each claim of mitigation
urged by a defendant.” State v. Boltz, 542 N.W.2d 9, 11 (Iowa Ct. App. 1995).
“Furthermore, the failure to acknowledge a particular sentencing circumstance
does not necessarily mean it was not considered.” Id.
The court gave the following reasons for its sentence:
Mr. McGinnis, you do have a history of abusing yourself
definitely. You also have a history of abusing other people and the
rights of other people. You do have a very extensive criminal
history, and, of course, we always try to rehabilitate individuals, and
I can tell that through your history of interventions that are listed in
pages 10, 11, and 12 of the presentence investigation report, we’ve
done a lot through our criminal justice system to try to get you to
figure out what you need to do to keep yourself out of jail and keep
yourself out of prison. A lot of good people have devoted a lot of
time, and our taxpayers have spent a lot of money trying to get you
over the years throughout your entire adult life to figure out what
you need to do to stay out of trouble and stop harming yourself and
stop harming other people, and you still haven’t figured it out. And
you’ve been granted probation a number of times previously, and I
note that all too often your probation ends up getting revoked.
I agree with [the prosecutor] that you’re one of those
individuals who just does whatever it is he wants to do rather than
what he’s required to do. Even with prison sentences hanging over
his head, you’re one of those people who just decides you’re going
to do what you want to do, abuse yourself, abuse other people and
ultimately have your probation revoked, so I don’t trust that you’d
be able to successfully satisfy the terms and conditions of probation
anyway, and you do need to go to prison. And one of the reasons
why I believe you need to go to prison is that you need to
understand that with the history that you’ve developed for yourself,
if you go out and commit crimes again in the future once you earn
your parole from prison, just plan on going to jail or prison again,
because we’ve done everything we can to try to help you figure
things out short of going to prison, and so any decisions you make
to violate our laws are very, very likely to result in you simply going
to prison again.
4
The court stated, “This sentence is appropriate for your age, your history, and the
reasons I have already stated on this record.” The court further stated it had
considered McGinnis’s “current medical situation” in determining the sentence.
The district court identified many reasons for imposing a sentence of
incarceration, including: McGinnis’s history of “abusing other people and the
rights of other people”; his “extensive criminal history”; prior unsuccessful
rehabilitative measures; his multiple probation revocations; his unlikely chances
of reform; and the need to protect the public from further offenses—as well as
McGinnis’s age and health. Each of these factors was pertinent to and properly
considered in imposing the sentence in this case. See Johnson, 513 N.W.2d at
519; see also Iowa Code § 907.5 (2013). We conclude the district court did not
abuse its discretion in imposing a term of incarceration.
AFFIRMED.
State of Iowa v. Cornell McGinnis
Combined Opinion