IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 22-1354
Filed February 7, 2024
JOSHUA DAVID MITCHELL,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Patrick R. Grady,
Judge.
Joshua Mitchell appeals the denial of his second application for
postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.
Jeffrey L. Powell of Keegan, Tindal & Jaeger, PLC, Iowa City, for appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Nicholas E. Siefert, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Considered by Schumacher, P.J., Badding, J., and Doyle, S.J.*
*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206
(2024).
2
DOYLE, Senior Judge.
Joshua Mitchell appeals the denial of his second application for
postconviction relief (PCR). He contests the knowing and voluntary nature of the
guilty pleas he entered more than one decade ago and claims actual innocence.
Because Mitchell fails to prove either claim, we affirm.
Mitchell was arrested and charged with two counts of second-degree sexual
abuse in 2011. He pled guilty two months later, and the district court sentenced
him to concurrent terms of twenty-five years in prison. Mitchell did not directly
appeal his convictions, but he filed PCR applications. In 2016, the district court
denied Mitchell relief in his first PCR action. We affirmed that ruling on appeal.
Mitchell v. State, No. 16-1674, 2017 WL 6033878, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 6,
2017).
While his first PCR action was on appeal, Mitchell started a second PCR
action. His counsel acknowledged that Mitchell’s second PCR application
repeated claims that were litigated in the first proceeding. But PCR counsel argued
that Mitchell did not previously litigate one claim and could not have raised it within
the three-year limitation period of Iowa Code section 822.3 (2011). Counsel cited
an affidavit in which Mitchell claimed that he remembered “important exculpatory
evidence” after stopping medication in 2017.1 But he did not file that affidavit. So
the PCR court provided notice that it intended to dismiss the application and gave
1 The State alleged that Mitchell sexually abused two children between
January 2010 and April 2011. Mitchell’s affidavit recalls a department of human
services investigation of physical injuries to the victims’ sibling two weeks before
his arrest. The victims were present during that investigation, and the department
did not find either victim showed signs of abuse.
3
Mitchell thirty days to respond. When no response came, the court dismissed the
application as untimely under section 822.3.
Mitchell appealed, claiming his PCR counsel was ineffective by failing to
present the PCR court with the affidavit and inform him of the proposed dismissal.
Before we decided the appeal, the supreme court issued two decisions that would
impact the outcome: Schmidt v. State, 909 N.W.2d 778, 795 (Iowa 2018) (allowing
a freestanding claim of actual innocence under the Iowa Constitution for
convictions resulting from guilty pleas), and Allison v. State, 914 N.W.2d 866, 891
(Iowa 2018) (holding that a PCR application alleging PCR counsel provided
ineffective assistance in presenting a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel
in a prior PCR proceeding “relates back to the timing of the filing of the original
PCR” application for purposes of Iowa Code section 822.3).2 Interpreting
Mitchell’s claim of a “lack of evidence” for his conviction as a claim of actual
innocence and guided by the new decisions, we “reverse[d] the summary dismissal
of Mitchell’s PCR claim and remand[ed] to the district court for further proceedings
and consideration of Mitchell’s claim that PCR counsel was ineffective.” Mitchell
v. State, No. 18-0112, 2018 WL 4913670, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 10, 2018).
Mitchell twice amended his PCR application following remand. After delays,
the PCR trial was held in March 2022. The PCR court denied Mitchell’s
application, finding his claim that he did not knowingly and intelligently enter his
guilty pleas was merely a “re-branding of his previous claims in his first PCR.” The
2 A legislative amendment has since abrogated the relation-back doctrine. See
2019 Iowa Acts ch. 140, § 34 (codified at Iowa Code § 822.3 (Supp. 2019)); Brooks
v. State, 975 N.W.2d 444, 446 (Iowa Ct. App. 2022) (recognizing abrogation).
4
PCR court also expressed doubt as to whether the evidence Mitchell relied on for
his actual-innocence claim qualified as newly discovered. In any case, the court
noted that the new evidence “is only impeaching.” After weighing it against the
evidence of his guilt, including Mitchell’s admissions that he sexually abused the
victims, the court found that Mitchell failed his burden of proving the new evidence
would have changed the result of the criminal proceeding.
Mitchell challenges the denial of his second PCR application. He claims his
mental health and medications prevented him from knowingly and intelligently
pleading guilty and led him to plead guilty despite his innocence. He also raises a
freestanding claim of actual innocence. We review denials of PCR applications for
correction of errors at law and the deprivation of constitutional rights de novo. See
Sothman v. State, 967 N.W.2d 512, 522 (Iowa 2021). We give weight to the district
court’s findings, especially when they pertain to witness credibility. See id.
We agree that res judicata bars Mitchell’s challenge to the knowing and
intelligent nature of his guilty pleas. We noted in the first PCR appeal that “a review
of the medical records made the day before the plea proceedings indicate[s]
Mitchell was not experiencing any side effects from the prescribed medications
such that his plea would be involuntary or unintelligently made.” Mitchell, 2017 WL
6033878, at *2. On this basis, we found that “Mitchell has failed to prove trial
counsel was ineffective in allowing him to plead guilty or that his PCR counsel was
ineffective in not pursuing a ruling on whether Mitchell’s medications affected his
ability to render his plea.” Id. “[A] postconviction proceedings is not available to
relitigate issues previously adjudicated.” State v. Jackson, 199 N.W.2d 102, 102–
03 (Iowa 1972); accord Holmes v. State, 775 N.W.2d 733, 735 (Iowa Ct. App.
5
2009) (“A post-conviction proceeding is not intended as a vehicle for relitigation,
on the same factual basis, of issues previously adjudicated, and the principle of
Res judicata bars additional litigation on this point.” (cleaned up)).
We also agree that Mitchell has not met his burden of showing actual
innocence. To succeed, Mitchell “must show by clear and convincing evidence
that, despite the evidence of guilt supporting the conviction, no reasonable fact
finder could convict the applicant of the crimes for which the sentencing court found
the applicant guilty in light of all the evidence, including the newly discovered
evidence.” Schmidt, 909 N.W.2d at 797. But “Schmidt does not apply to overcome
the statute of limitations where the evidence put forward to support a claim of actual
innocence was available to the applicant or could have been discovered with due
diligence within the limitations period.” Quinn v. State, 954 N.W.2d 75, 77 (Iowa
Ct. App. 2020). Although Mitchell claims he could not remember until recently, the
exculpatory evidence he relies on existed before his arrest. Even ignoring that
Mitchell’s claim falls outside the limitation period, Mitchell cannot show by clear
and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder could have found him guilty.
That investigators looking into physical abuse of another child by a different
perpetrator did not find the victims showed signs of physical or sexual abuse does
not overcome the evidence of Mitchell’s guilt when that evidence includes
Mitchell’s own admissions.
Because both claims Mitchell raises fail, we affirm the denial of his second
PCR application.
AFFIRMED.