IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 16-0562
Filed May 3, 2017
NATHAN DOMINIC CURTIS,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Cerro Gordo County, James M.
Drew, Judge.
Nathan Curtis seeks review of the district court’s dismissal of his
application for postconviction relief, arguing his sentence constitutes cruel and
unusual punishment. WRIT ANNULLED.
Travis M. Armbrust of Brown, Kinsey, Funkhouser & Lander, P.L.C.,
Mason City, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Kelli A. Huser, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee.
Considered by Mullins, P.J., and Bower and McDonald, JJ.
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MULLINS, Presiding Judge.
Nathan Curtis seeks review of the district court’s dismissal of his
application for postconviction relief (PCR), arguing his sentence constitutes cruel
and unusual punishment under both the federal and state constitutions. Upon
our de novo review, we affirm.
In May 2004, Curtis approached a woman on her way to the gym, put a
knife to her throat, and asked for her money. State v. Curtis, No. 04-1878, 2005
WL 1398337, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. June 15, 2005). The woman responded that
she did not have any money, and Curtis demanded she give him her gym bag
instead. Id. Curtis was eighteen years old at the time.
In October of that year, a jury convicted Curtis of robbery in the first
degree, a class “B” felony, in violation of Iowa Code sections 711.1 and 711.2
(2003). The district court sentenced Curtis to a term of incarceration not to
exceed twenty-five years and imposed a mandatory minimum of seventy percent
pursuant to section 902.12(5).
On December 4, 2014, Curtis filed a PCR application alleging ineffective
assistance of counsel. He subsequently amended the application, asserting the
mandatory minimum sentence imposed was illegal and he should have received
an individualized sentencing hearing because he was only eighteen years old at
the time he committed the robbery. The district court entered a ruling rejecting
Curtis’s argument and dismissing the action.
“We review constitutional claims de novo.” Bonilla v. State, 791 N.W.2d
697, 699 (Iowa 2010). “This court may correct an illegal sentence at any time.”
Id. (citing Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.24(5)(a)). “A claim that a sentence is
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unconstitutional because it constitutes cruel and unusual punishment is a claim
of an illegal sentence and may therefore be raised at any time.” Id.
Curtis claims his sentence of twenty-five years’ incarceration with a
mandatory minimum of seventy percent violates his constitutional right to be free
from cruel and unusual punishment under the both the Eighth Amendment of the
U.S. Constitution and article I, section 17 of the Iowa Constitution. He asks us to
adopt a categorical ban on all mandatory minimum sentences for offenders who
were age twenty-five or younger when they committed the punishable offense or
for every defendant regardless of his or her age at the time of the commission of
the crime. He contends all criminal defendants subject to a mandatory minimum
sentence should receive an individualized sentencing hearing during which the
court considers individual circumstances and any mitigating factors.
We construe Curtis’s PCR action “as a motion to correct an illegal
sentence.” Id. at 700. However, because there is no right to appeal the denial of
a motion to correct an illegal sentence under Iowa Code section 814.6(1), we
determine the proper form of review is by a petition for writ of certiorari. See
State v. Dempsey, No. 15-1195, 2016 WL 3275306, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. June
15, 2016). Pursuant to Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure 6.108, we treat the
notice of appeal and briefs as a petition for writ of certiorari, grant the writ, and
proceed to address Curtis’s constitutional claims on the merits.
In State v. Lyle, 854 N.W.2d 378, 400 (Iowa 2014), the Iowa Supreme
Court held “all mandatory minimum sentences of imprisonment for youthful
offenders are unconstitutional under the cruel and unusual punishment clause in
article I, section 17 of [the Iowa C]onstitution.” Curtis claims Lyle should be
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extended to apply to “youthful offenders” under the age of twenty-five at the time
they committed the offense. Lyle, 854 N.W.2d at 400.
The Lyle court expressly limited its holding to “youthful offenders” who
were under the age of eighteen at the time the offense was committed. Id. at 403
(“[O]ur holding today has no application to sentencing laws affecting adult
offenders. Lines are drawn in our law by necessity and are incorporated into the
jurisprudence we have developed to usher the Iowa Constitution through time.
This case does not move any of the lines that currently exist in the sentencing of
adult offenders.”). Thus, the court’s holding in Lyle is clearly not applicable in this
case. See, e.g., Kimpton v. State, No. 15-2061, 2017 WL 108303, at *2–3 (Iowa
Ct. App. Jan. 11, 2017); see also State v. Vance, No. 15-0070, 2015 WL
4936328, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 19, 2015). We decline to extend the holding
in Lyle to cases involving adult offenders. See State v. Eichler, 83 N.W.2d 576,
578 (Iowa 1957) (“If our previous holdings are to be overruled, we should
ordinarily prefer to do it ourselves.”); State v. Hastings, 466 N.W.2d 697, 700
(Iowa Ct. App. 1990) (“We are not at liberty to overturn Iowa Supreme Court
precedent.”). Accordingly, we affirm the district court’s dismissal of this action.
WRIT ANNULLED.