IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 13-1868
Filed May 6, 2015
JOHN EDWARD COWLES,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Davis County, Myron L. Gookin,
Judge.
An applicant appeals the district court’s denial of his application for
postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.
Mark C. Smith, State Appellate Defender, and Patricia Reynolds, Assistant
Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Alexandra Link, Assistant Attorney
General, Rick L. Lynch, County Attorney, and Ashley M. Leyda, Assistant County
Attorney, for appellee State.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Vaitheswaran and Potterfield, JJ. Tabor,
J. takes no part.
2
VOGEL, P.J.
John Cowles was originally charged with twenty counts of second-degree
sexual abuse, four counts of third-degree sexual abuse, and one count of incest
all arising out of his sexual abuse of his daughter over a number of years. See
State v. Cowles, 757 N.W.2d 614, 615 (Iowa 2008). He pled guilty to one count
of second-degree sexual abuse, four counts of third-degree sexual abuse, and
one count of incest. Id. The plea agreement called for a joint sentencing
recommendation of concurrent sentences for all the counts and a 70%
mandatory minimum sentence imposed on the class “B” felony, the second-
degree sexual abuse conviction. Id. at 616. The court accepted the plea
agreement and the joint sentencing recommendation, and sentenced Cowles
accordingly. Id.
Cowles did not file a direct appeal, but instead, on July 7, 2006, he filed a
motion to correct an illegal sentence asserting the imposition of the mandatory
minimum violated the constitutional prohibitions against ex post facto laws. Id.
He stated the mandatory-minimum-sentence statute went into effect on July 1,
1996, but he was alleged to have committed the offense sometime between April
9, 1996, and February 3, 1997. Because the plea colloquy did not establish he
committed the crime after July 1, 1996, he claimed the imposition of the
mandatory minimum sentence was illegal. Id.
The supreme court rejected Cowles’s claim, finding:
Under the circumstances presented in this case, we
conclude the mandatory minimum sentence did not violate the Ex
Post Facto clauses. At his plea and sentencing hearing, Cowles
expressly admitted he perpetrated a sex act on a victim under
twelve years of age between April 9, 1996 and February 2, 1997.
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Cowles also acknowledged he wished to plead guilty after he was
advised he would be required to serve at least seventy percent of
the maximum sentence for the offense. Although it is true Cowles
did not expressly admit during the plea colloquy he committed the
offense after July 1, 1996, we find an implicit admission of such
conduct in the full context of the hearing.
The record made by the parties on the occasion of the plea-
taking and sentencing hearing evidences Cowles admitted guilt for
an act of sexual abuse that occurred after July 1, 1996. The
mandatory minimum sentence requirement of section 902.12
applied only to acts of sexual abuse committed after that date. As
we have already noted, the court informed Cowles an admission of
guilt would expose him to a mandatory minimum sentence. With
knowledge of that prospect, and after his counsel confirmed on the
record he had advised his client of the maximum and minimum
penalties that could result, Cowles entered and the court accepted
the guilty plea. We conclude the guilty plea and the resulting
sentence conformed completely with the parties’ plea agreement.
This conclusion is supported by the fact Cowles did not challenge
the legality of the sentence until he filed an application for
postconviction relief more than two years later on August 4, 2005.
Under the circumstances, we conclude no violation of the Ex Post
Facto clauses occurred here.
Id. at 617.
Cowles filed an application for postconviction relief (PCR), as amended,
making a number of claims all challenging the imposition of the mandatory
minimum sentence.1 The district court rejected the challenges, finding
Although the Plaintiff has raised numerous issues in his
application, amendments thereto, and numerous other filings, his
complaints boil down to a rather narrow issue that can be readily
resolved. All of Plaintiffs issues boil down to a determination of
whether the twenty-five year sentence on his class B felony 2nd
degree sexual abuse conviction is subject to a 70% mandatory
minimum.
Plaintiff claims he is not subject to the 70% mandatory
minimum and, because he was advised by his counsel and the
court that he was subject to such a mandatory minimum, such
inaccurate advice infected his plea and sentencing hearing such
that he did not make a knowing and voluntary guilty plea, his
1
Multiple PCR filings were made part of this record, beginning in August 2005 and
continuing through July 2013.
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attorneys were ineffective, there was a lack of factual basis in
support of his guilty plea, he was denied full allocution at
sentencing, he did not make a fully informed, knowledgeable and
voluntary decision to waive use of a presentence investigation at
sentencing, the court failed to recite an adequate reason for the
sentence, and his attorney in a subsequent appeal on a motion for
reconsideration of sentence was ineffective because he failed to
respond to a “terrible, terrible prejudicial inaccuracy in a brief made
by the state.” All of Plaintiff’s claims in his postconviction relief
application depend on his assertion that he is not subject to the
70% mandatory minimum on his 2nd degree sexual abuse
conviction.
....
This Court reaches the same conclusion [as the supreme
court] concerning Plaintiff’s guilty plea. Plaintiff knew exactly what
he was doing when he accepted a plea bargain that required him to
plead guilty to one out of twenty charges of 2nd degree sexual
abuse and receive a 70% mandatory minimum sentence thereon,
together with other charges of 3rd degree sexual abuse and incest,
with concurrent sentences. Any claim on his part that he did not
know what he was doing at his guilty plea, or that he would not
have accepted the plea bargain if he knew convictions to pre-July
1, 1996 acts did not carry a mandatory minimum sentence, are
simply not credible for the following reasons.
The record reveals Plaintiff did not want to drag his family
through a trial and never intended to take any of the charges to
trial. It further reveals the Davis County attorney would not agree to
any kind of a plea bargain that did not require a 70% mandatory
minimum sentence under a 2nd degree sexual abuse guilty plea. It
is incomprehensible and unbelievable that Plaintiff would have
rejected the plea bargain he accepted, and instead take twenty
charges of 2nd degree sexual abuse to trial, together with the other
3rd degree sexual abuse and incest charges, if he would have
known about the July 1, 1996 mandatory minimum law change.
Even if all of the 2nd degree sexual abuse charges were based on
pre-July 1, 1996 acts, the potential sentence for convictions on all
such charges would be 500 years, if ordered to run consecutively.
And, such 500 years of potential incarceration does not include the
45 additional years of incarceration that could be imposed for
possible convictions on the other four Class C (3rd degree sexual
abuse) and one Class D (incest) felonies.
Plaintiff’s claims are directly contradicted by his interaction
with the court at his guilty plea hearing and sentencing. See Arnold
v. State, 540 N.W.2d 243, 246 (Iowa 1995) (holding where such
direct contradiction occurs the applicant bears a special burden to
establish that the record is inaccurate). The transcript of his guilty
plea and sentencing hearing clearly establishes he fully understood
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the plea bargain, including the nature of the crimes to which he was
pleading and the 70% mandatory minimum sentence to which he
would be subjected on the 2nd degree sexual abuse conviction,
and that he understood what he was doing throughout the
proceedings. Plaintiff has failed in his special burden of proof and
the Court finds he was acting intelligently and voluntary at his guilty
plea hearing and completely understood his plea agreement and
the potential consequences. Consistent with the Iowa Supreme
Court’s analysis, this Court finds Plaintiff knowingly, intelligently and
voluntarily pled guilty to an act constituting 2nd degree sexual
abuse that occurred on or after July 1, 1996, which provided a
proper basis for the 70% mandatory minimum sentence imposed
against him.
With a determination that Plaintiff made a knowing and
intelligent guilty plea and that he was subject to the 70% mandatory
minimum sentence on his 2nd degree sexual abuse conviction, all
other postconviction claims by Plaintiff must fail and the Court will
not further address such claims.
Cowles appeals the district court’s PCR ruling claiming (1) the district
court erred in concluding his guilty plea counsel was not ineffective in failing to
inform him of the crucial law change regarding the imposition of a mandatory
minimum sentence for crimes committed after July 1, 1996, making his plea
involuntary, unknowing, and unintelligent, and (2) PCR counsel was ineffective in
failing to get a ruling on the meritorious pro se issues, specifically (a) that his
guilty plea lacked a factual basis, (b) that the plea court erred in assuming it had
no discretion regarding the imposition of the 70% mandatory minimum, and (c)
that the prosecutor committed misconduct by not informing the court and Cowles
of the law change regarding the mandatory minimum. In addition, Cowles filed a
pro se brief in this PCR appeal alleging PCR counsel was ineffective in not
seeking a ruling from the district court addressing his claim that his allocution
was not fully informed and knowledgeable where he did not know he could ask
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for a sentence without the 70% mandatory minimum—a better sentence than he
bargained for under the plea agreement.
We agree with the district court that all of Cowles’s claims boil down to his
claim that the 70% mandatory minimum should not be applied to him because he
did not plead guilty to an offense occurring after July 1, 1996. This claim was
resolved by the supreme court when it found an “implicit admission” to such
conduct as a result of pleading guilty to the offense with full knowledge the 70%
minimum would be applied to him under the parties’ plea agreement. Cowles,
757 N.W.2d at 617. Because the supreme court found this implicit admission,
the guilty plea was supported by a factual basis, the district court did not have
discretion to forgo imposing the mandatory minimum, and the prosecutor did not
commit misconduct in not informing Cowles or the court to the contrary. Thus, to
the extent Cowles asserts PCR counsel was ineffective in not getting an explicit
ruling from the PCR court on these pro se claims, his claim fails. See State v.
Dudley, 766 N.W.2d 606, 620 (Iowa 2009) (“[W]e have held that counsel has no
duty to raise an issue that has no merit.”).
Cowles’s pro se claim addressing his allocution likewise fails. Cowles
could not have asked for a sentence without the mandatory minimum as the
guilty plea included an implicit admission to committing the offense after July 1,
1996, the plea agreement called for a joint sentencing recommendation with the
mandatory minimum, which would make it a breach of the plea agreement if
Cowles requested a lighter sentence, and the district court had to impose the
minimum as it was mandatory. Likewise, Cowles’s plea counsel was not
ineffective in failing to inform him of the law change where the prosecutor made
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clear there would be no plea bargain without the mandatory minimum on the
second-degree sexual abuse guilty plea.
We agree with the district court’s rejection of Cowles’s PCR claims and
affirm its decision under Iowa Court Rule 21.26(1)(d) and (e).
AFFIRMED.