IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 17-0261
Filed September 13, 2017
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
SHAWN WILLIAM MICHAEL KIGER,
Defendant-Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, John D. Telleen,
Judge.
The defendant appeals from his conviction, following a guilty plea, for
assault causing serious injury. AFFIRMED.
Eric D. Tindal of Keegan and Farnsworth, Iowa City, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Thomas E. Bakke, Assistant
Attorney General, for appellee.
Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Potterfield and Mullins, JJ.
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POTTERFIELD, Judge.
Shawn Kiger appeals from his conviction, following a guilty plea, for
assault causing serious injury. Kiger maintains his trial counsel provided
ineffective assistance. More specifically, Kiger claims counsel was ineffective for
failing to ensure Kiger understood the term “serious injury,” which made his
admission of guilt unknowing and involuntary.
In order to establish counsel was ineffective, Kiger is required to
demonstrate, among other things, “a reasonable probability that, but for counsel’s
error, he [or she] would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going
to trial.” State v. Fisher, 877 N.W.2d 676, 682 n.3 (Iowa 2016) (alteration in
original). Kiger fails to even claim as much here. However, Kiger’s claim must
be preserved for postconviction relief. See State v. Johnson, 784 N.W.2d 192,
198 (Iowa 2010) (stating defendants, on direct appeal, “are not required to make
any particular record in order to preserve the claim for postconviction relief” and
when the record is inadequate to address the claim, “the court must preserve it
for a postconviction-relief proceeding, regardless of the court’s view of the
potential viability of the claim”); see also State v. Roby, No. 16-0191, 2016 WL
4384979, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 17, 2016) (noting we may not penalize a
defendant for inadequate briefing on a claim of ineffective assistance on direct
appeal). Moreover, even if Kiger had made the appropriate assertion, the record
before us is not adequate to determine the validity of it. See State v. Delacy, No.
16-0827, 2017 WL 1735684, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. May 3, 2017) (en banc) (finding
a defendant’s claim he would have insisted on going to trial could not be decided
on direct appeal even though “it is tempting to conclude there is no reasonable
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probability [the defendant] would have insisted on going to trial in light of the
substantial reduction in the amount of prison time and fines the plea agreement
offered compared to the charges the State filed” because “circumstances
underlying the prosecution’s motivation for the plea offer and the defendant’s
willingness to go to trial are facts that should be permitted to be more fully
developed”).
We preserve Kiger’s claim for further development of the record. We
affirm.
AFFIRMED.