IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 17-0932
Filed April 18, 2018
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
DOMINIC DEVON EADY,
Defendant-Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Henry County, John M. Wright,
Judge.
A defendant appeals his convictions for second-degree burglary and first-
degree theft. AFFIRMED.
Jeffrey L. Powell of Powell and McCullough, P.L.C., Coralville, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Bridget A. Chambers, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee.
Considered by Vaitheswaran, P.J., and Potterfield and Tabor, JJ.
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TABOR, Judge.
Life can turn on a dime. On Thanksgiving Day 2016, Barb Stukerjurgen
expected Dominic Eady, her boyfriend and former coworker, to join her family for
dinner. Instead he disappeared. Their employer, Innovaire, discovered someone
swiped Stukerjurgen’s badge to enter the closed factory over the holiday
shutdown. Eady lived with Stukerjurgen and had access to her badge. Innovaire’s
security footage showed a masked intruder loading fifty-pound coin bags onto
pallets with a hand jack and power lifts—skills Eady touted on his resume. The
intruder left with $40,000 in dimes—weighing a total of 2000 pounds. Innovaire
operates as a non-profit mailer, and the dimes were for a job the company was
preparing for the March of Dimes, a major customer. In early December 2016,
Eady piqued the interest of an off-duty deputy by dumping a backpack full of “shiny”
dimes into a Coinstar machine at a Florida Walmart.
Based on these facts, a Henry County jury found Eady guilty of burglary in
the second degree and theft in the first degree. Eady appeals his convictions,
alleging his trial counsel did not provide effective assistance because counsel
failed to depose the State’s witnesses or have voir dire reported. Because
ineffective-assistance claims are grounded in the Sixth Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution and article I, section 9 of the Iowa Constitution, we review them de
novo. State v. Virgil, 895 N.W.2d 873, 879 (Iowa 2017).
To succeed on his claims, Eady must prove trial counsel’s performance fell
below what is expected of a reasonably competent defense attorney, and the
omissions resulted in prejudice to his case. See Strickland v. Washington, 466
U.S. 668, 687 (1984). It is often our practice to preserve claims against counsel
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for possible postconviction relief proceedings. State v. Clay, 824 N.W.2d 488, 494
(Iowa 2012). Preservation is the preferred resolution where the defendant is
challenging decisions by counsel that implicate trial tactics and may be best
explained in a fully developed record. Id. “We will resolve the claims on direct
appeal only when the record is adequate.” Id. (citing State v. Rubino, 602 N.W.2d
558, 563 (Iowa 1999)).
Defendants are not required to raise ineffective-assistance claims on direct
appeal, and “when they choose to do so, they are not required to make any
particular record in order to preserve the claim for postconviction relief.” State v.
Johnson, 784 N.W.2d 192, 198 (Iowa 2010). Eady asks us to preserve his claims
for a postconviction-relief action. The State agrees the record is insufficient to
determine if Eady received competent representation. Accordingly, we affirm
Eady’s convictions and preserve his claims of ineffective assistance for
determination by a postconviction-relief court.
AFFIRMED.