IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 17-0119
Filed February 7, 2018
IN THE INTEREST OF D.M.,
Minor Child-Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Christine Dalton Ploof,
District Associate Judge.
A juvenile appeals from her delinquency adjudication, claiming it was not
supported by substantial evidence. AFFIRMED.
Patrick J. Kelly, Bettendorf, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Ana Dixit, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Potterfield and Mullins, JJ.
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POTTERFIELD, Judge.
The juvenile, D.M., appeals her adjudication as a delinquent, which was
based on the court’s findings she committed the delinquent acts of robbery in the
first degree and willful injury resulting in bodily injury. She maintains there was
insufficient evidence to support the court’s findings, arguing there was no evidence
she “intended to steal the property of [the victim] or . . . had the intent to assault or
harm [the victim] in any way.”
Delinquency proceedings are special proceedings that serve as an
alternative to the criminal prosecution of a child, and we review them de novo. In
re A.K., 825 N.W.2d 46, 49 (Iowa 2013). “We presume the child is innocent of the
charges, and the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that
the juvenile committed the delinquent acts.” Id.
Willful Injury Resulting in Bodily Injury. Pursuant to Iowa Code section
232.2(12)(a) (2016), a delinquent act is “[t]he violation of any state law or local
ordinance which would constitute a public offense if committed by an adult.”
Section 708.4(2) makes it illegal to do “an act which is not justified and which is
intended to cause serious injury to another . . . if the person causes bodily injury
to another.”
Here, D.M. maintains there was no evidence presented at trial that she
physically participated in the “jumping” of the victim. She is correct, but this
argument ignores the court’s reliance on the principle of aiding and abetting in
making its determination D.M. had committed the delinquent act.
The evidence presented at trial establishes that D.M., two codefendants,
and the victim were spending the evening hanging out together in front of a local
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YMCA, when the two codefendants acted together in repeatedly hitting the victim
“everywhere”—including her head—until she fell to the ground. One of the
codefendants then proceeded to stomp on the victim’s head approximately four
times. As the district court stated, “Stomping on a person’s head while they are on
the ground shows an intent to cause serious injury.” See State v. Taylor, 689
N.W.2d 116, 132 (Iowa 2004) (considering “the principle that an actor will ordinarily
be viewed as intended the natural and probable consequences that usually follow
from his or her voluntary act”); see also Iowa Code § 702.18 (defining serious
injury, in part, as a bodily injury “creat[ing] a substantial risk of death,” “caus[ing]
serious permanent disfigurement,” of suffering “skull fractures”). Additionally, it is
undisputed the victim sustained bodily injury. See State v. Gordon, 560 N.W.2d 4,
6 (Iowa 1997) (noting the court had adopted the Model Penal Code’s definition of
“bodily injury,” which was “physical pain, illness, or any impairment of physical
condition” (citation omitted)).
The victim testified that before the attack, she noticed D.M. and the two
codefendants whispering and looking at her, causing her to feel uncomfortable and
leading her to make a phone call to her mother asking to be picked up. Within a
few minutes—before the victim’s mother arrived—the first codefendant charged at
the victim and hit her. This, combined with D.M.’s response to the assault—taking
the victim’s purse and running away while the victim was unable to stop or chase
her—convinces us that D.M. “assented to or lent continence and approval to the”
assault “by some manner encouraging it prior to or at the time of its commission.”
State v. Spates, 779 N.W.2d 770, 780 (Iowa 2010) (citation omitted).
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There is sufficient evidence to support the juvenile court’s finding that D.M.
committed the delinquent act of aiding and abetting willful injury causing bodily
injury.
Robbery in the First Degree. As relevant here, pursuant to section 711.2,
“A person commits robbery in the first degree when, while perpetrating a robbery,
the person purposely inflicts or attempts to inflict serious injury.”
D.M. challenges the sufficiency of the court’s ruling by relying on her own
version of what took place. She relies on her testimony that she took the victim’s
purse only after the victim gave it to her and told her to run with it. But as the
district court noted, D.M.’s testimony is not credible for several reasons. First, her
statements about what took place were inconsistent with themselves—testifying
that the victim dropped her purse before starting the fight, that the victim threw the
purse to her after she hit one of the codefendants, and that the victim gave her the
purse and asked her to hold it. Her testimony was also inconsistent with that
provided by the worker from the YMCA. He testified that after the victim came in
and told him she got jumped, he accompanied her outside and asked the three
codefendants and the boy they were with if they knew what had just occurred or
where the victim’s purse was located; they responded they did not know what he
was talking about and stated “nothing happened.” On the other hand, D.M.
testified that when the victim came out with the man who worked at the YMCA, the
boy told the victim that her purse was in the bush. In her testimony, D.M. also
denied removing the victim’s phone from her purse, but this testimony is
contradicted by the fact that the officers recovered the phone in the grass near
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where they stopped the girls—a number of blocks from the YMCA where the
altercation took place.
Because the credible evidence establishes that D.M. stole the victim’s purse
while her two cohorts assaulted the victim—punching her repeatedly and, after she
fell to the ground, stomping on her head—substantial evidence supports the finding
that D.M. committed the delinquent act of robbery in the first degree.
We affirm the juvenile court’s adjudication of D.M. as a delinquent based on
the findings she committed both delinquent acts of willful injury causing bodily
injury and robbery in the first degree.
AFFIRMED.
In re D.M.
Combined Opinion