IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 16-1448
Filed July 6, 2017
ALVIN LEE GAINES,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Stephen B. Jackson
Jr. (motion to dismiss) and Ian K. Thornhill (trial), Judges.
Appeal from the denial of an application for postconviction relief.
AFFIRMED.
Webb L. Wassmer of Wassmer Law Office, PLC, Marion, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Kevin Cmelik, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Doyle and McDonald, JJ.
2
MCDONALD, Judge.
Alvin Gaines was convicted of attempted murder, willful injury, and going
armed with intent. This court affirmed his convictions and sentences on direct
appeal. See State v. Gaines, No. 07-0987, 2008 WL 2520829, at *5 (Iowa Ct.
App. June 25, 2008). Gaines filed an application for postconviction relief, which
was denied. The denial of Gaines’s application for postconviction relief was
affirmed by this court. See Gaines v. State, No. 10-0129, 2010 WL 5394733, at
*1 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 22, 2010).
This case arises out of a subsequent application for postconviction relief.
In the application, Gaines claimed his sentences are illegal because the
convictions and sentences should merge and/or he cannot be subjected to
consecutive sentences when the convictions are grounded in a single act. The
postconviction-relief court granted summary dismissal of Gaines’s claims. On
review for errors at law, we conclude the claims are without merit. See State v.
Love, 858 N.W.2d 721, 723 (Iowa 2015); Castro v. State, 795 N.W.2d 789, 792
(Iowa 2011). These claims, or materially indistinguishable permutations of these
claims, were resolved in Gaines’s prior proceedings. It is well-settled multiple
convictions and sentences may arise from the same offense conduct, and this
court previously reached this conclusion on direct appeal. See Gaines, 2008 WL
2520829, at *5. Merger applies when multiple offenses are charged and at least
one offense is a lesser-included offense of another. Iowa Code § 701.9 (2005).
This court previously determined none of Gaines’s sentenced offenses was a
lesser-included offense of another. See Gaines, 2008 WL 2520829, at *5. The
merger rule is inapplicable here.
3
We affirm the denial of Gaines’s application for postconviction relief
without further opinion. See Iowa Ct. R. 21.26(1)(a) and (e).
AFFIRMED.