IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 15-1322
Filed August 17, 2016
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
ALEX JAY HARLOW,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Jasper County, Steven J.
Holwerda, District Associate Judge.
Defendant appeals his conviction for simple assault. AFFIRMED.
John C. Heinicke of Kragnes & Associates, P.C., Des Moines, for
appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Tyler J. Buller, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee.
Considered by Potterfield, P.J., and Mullins and McDonald, JJ.
2
MCDONALD, Judge.
Alex Harlow was convicted of assault in violation of Iowa Code 708.1 and
708.2(6) (2013), a simple misdemeanor. A single justice of the supreme court
granted discretionary review. The State requests this appeal be dismissed
because discretionary review should be granted only where the case involves a
substantial question of law, the determination of which will be beneficial to the
bar. The case upon which the State relies, State v. Warren, 216 N.W.2d 326
(Iowa 1974), is inapplicable here. Warren addressed the standard applied to the
State’s request for review of a criminal case following acquittal. See Warren, 216
N.W.2d at 327. Requiring the State to establish a substantial question as a
prerequisite to appellate review following acquittal makes sense because the
prohibition against retrying the defendant for the same offense following acquittal
moots the appeal in the absence of some policy reason for addressing the legal
issue. There is no similar concern regarding the defendant’s application for
discretionary review following conviction. See Iowa Code 814.6(2)(d) (2015)
(providing for discretionary review of simple misdemeanor convictions). We thus
decline the State’s request to dismiss this appeal.
On the merits, we affirm the defendant’s conviction. The defendant was
charged with assaulting a baby. The evidence showed Harlow inadvertently
struck the baby in the face and gave the baby a black eye while assaulting the
baby’s mother, who was holding the baby at the time of the assault. The verdict
is supported by the evidence and the law. The district court did not err in denying
the defendant’s motion for judgment of acquittal or abuse its discretion in denying
the defendant’s motion for new trial. See State v. Williams, 695 N.W.2d 23, 27
3
(Iowa 2005) (stating review of motion for judgment of acquittal is for the
correction of legal error); State v. Hendrickson, 444 N.W.2d 468, 472 (Iowa 1989)
(reviewing motion for new trial for abuse of discretion); State v. Alford, 151
N.W.2d 573, 574 (Iowa 1967) (explaining transferred-intent doctrine), overruled
on other grounds by State v. Bester, 167 N.W.2d 705 (Iowa 1969); State v.
Huston, 174 N.W. 641, 643 (Iowa 1919) (“The defendant requested an instruction
. . . that the burden was upon the state to prove that the fatal shot was not
accidental. Such requested instruction, if given, would have been quite
misleading to the jury. The shot was accidental so far as the person injured was
concerned; but, as already indicated herein, such fact did not relieve it of its
criminality.”); State v. Ruhl, 8 Iowa 447, 448 (Iowa 1859) (“A party is liable for a
wrongful act, where there exists a criminal intent, although the act done, is not
that which was intended. The wrongful intent to do one act, is transposed to the
other, and constitutes the same offense.”); State v. Robinson, No. 14-1845, 2016
WL 894110, at *3–4 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 9, 2016) (profane threat, lunging at
clerk, grabbing cigarettes from clerk, and gesturing as if holding a weapon
constituted an assault); State v. Vaughn, No. 02-1470, 2003 WL 21919278, at *2
(Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 13, 2003) (snatching of phone, when coupled with other
conduct, established assault); see also State v. Aguilar, 308 P.3d 778, 784
(Wash. Ct. App. 2013) (“Under the doctrine of transferred intent, once the intent
to inflict harm on one victim is established, the mens rea transfers to any other
victim who is actually assaulted.”).
AFFIRMED.