Kyle v. State
| Citation | 322 N.W.2d 299 |
| Decision Date | 21 July 1982 |
| Docket Number | No. 66881,66881 |
| Parties | John Thomas KYLE, Appellant, v. STATE of Iowa, Appellee. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Court of Iowa |
Patricia N. Fetzer, Iowa City, and Sarah Megan, John Wunder, Kim Dulin and Dennis Shields, Student Legal Interns, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Atty. Gen., Roxann M. Ryan, Asst. Atty. Gen., and David H. Correll, County Atty., for appellee.
Considered en banc.
Applicant John Thomas Kyle appeals from the district court's summary dismissal under section 663A.6, The Code, of his application for postconviction relief. We consider the following issues based on his 1964 plea of guilty to an open charge of murder, section 690.1, The Code 1962, and the subsequent determination of first-degree murder under section 690.4, The Code 1962:
1) Whether postconviction court erred in summarily dismissing the application for postconviction relief based on the following claims of applicant:
a) the plea of guilty to the open charge of murder was not knowing, intelligent and voluntary;
b) his confession was unlawfully obtained;
c) trial court relied on hearsay evidence in determining he acted with premeditation;
d) he was denied his due process right to be found guilty only upon offenses charged by the State;
e) he was denied effective assistance of counsel;
f) his trial as an adult instead of a juvenile without a prior juvenile hearing, solely on the basis of the charge against him, violated his rights of due process and equal protection of the law.
2) Whether postconviction court erred in finding that applicant's resistance to the notice of intent to dismiss was untimely and refusing to consider the resistance in its ruling.
3) Whether postconviction court erred in failing to consider or allow applicant's motion for leave to amend his application for postconviction relief.
Our resolution of these issues requires affirmance in part and reversal in part of postconviction court's summary dismissal of the application for postconviction relief and we remand this case for an evidentiary hearing on several issues. All code references are to the 1981 Code unless otherwise indicated.
Because Kyle did not take a direct appeal from the 1964 entry of judgment of first-degree murder, we will briefly set out the facts of the crime giving rise to the present action. 1 The body of nineteen year old Diane Gable was found in the Waterloo home of her parents on June 1, 1964. She had been choked, beaten and fatally stabbed in the heart with a knife. During the investigation of the homicide the Waterloo police were informed by a neighbor that he had heard that Kyle had recently been in a fight with the victim's boyfriend.
The police contacted Kyle in regard to the alleged fight, and he went to the police station to discuss it. During the discussion Kyle confessed that he had killed the victim. Kyle was subsequently charged with the murder of Diane Gable in violation of section 690.1, The Code 1962. 2 He pled guilty to an open charge of murder. On October 26, 1964, after a hearing to determine his degree of guilt pursuant to section 690.4, The Code 1962, 3 trial court entered judgment finding Kyle guilty of premeditated first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. § 690.2, The Code 1962.
On September 26, 1979, Kyle filed an application for postconviction relief in Black Hawk District Court. § 663A.3. Pursuant to court order, Kyle filed a supplementation of record on December 31, 1980, setting forth by affidavit facts within his personal knowledge which supported his claims for relief. §§ 663A.3, .4.
On February 18, 1981, postconviction court filed an order indicating its intent to dismiss Kyle's application for postconviction relief pursuant to section 663A.6. The postconviction court based its decision on Kyle's application for postconviction relief and a record consisting of the transcript of the October 5, 1964, degree of guilt hearing and the information and judgment in connection therewith, and the December 31, 1980, supplementation of record. 4 Kyle was given until March 24, 1981, to file his reply to the proposed dismissal.
On March 24 Kyle served his "resistance to court's notice of intent to dismiss" by placing it in a United States Post Office depository in Iowa City. The resistance was file stamped by the Black Hawk County clerk of court on March 25. Kyle also served by mail on March 24 a motion for leave to amend his application for postconviction relief and a copy of the proposed amendment, which were filed stamped on March 25.
By order filed March 30, 1981, the court dismissed Kyle's application for postconviction relief because he was "not entitled to postconviction relief and no purpose would be served by any further proceedings herein." § 663A.6. The court found that applicant had made no reply by March 24, 1981, and that the filings made were "delinquent and not entitled to consideration." Kyle's motion to reconsider was overruled and he appealed to this court. We granted limited remand, requesting that postconviction court consider applicant's contention that his resistance to the notice of intent to dismiss was timely filed. Postconviction court responded to the limited remand by filing an order again finding Kyle's reply untimely and elaborating on the reasons for the dismissal of the application for postconviction relief.
We now turn to the merits of Kyle's claims.
I. Summary dismissal of application. Kyle contends postconviction court erred by summarily dismissing his application for postconviction relief and failing to allow an evidentiary hearing. 5 We agree with this contention, but only with regard to certain of his claims for relief. Some of his claims for relief were properly dismissed.
Section 663A.6 provides two statutory methods for summary disposition of postconviction relief applications. Watson v. State, 294 N.W.2d 555, 556 (Iowa 1980); Hines v. State, 288 N.W.2d 344, 346 (Iowa 1980). Postconviction court in the present case used the first method, "summary disposition on the court's initiative." Hines, 288 N.W.2d at 346.
Summary disposition by the first statutory method is not proper if a material issue of fact exists. § 663A.6 (). ["Disposition on the pleadings and record is not proper if a material issue of fact exists."] Thus we must determine by examining the pleadings and record before us whether any material issue of fact exists that militated the reception of evidence by trial court, as provided in section 663A.7.
Watson, 294 N.W.2d at 556. 6 "Whether a genuine issue of material fact exists, so as to preclude summary disposition, turns on whether reasonable minds could draw different inferences and reach different conclusions from them." Boge v. State, 309 N.W.2d 428, 430 (Iowa 1981).
On the other hand, "We find no need for trial court to afford petitioner a hearing on allegations which directly contradict the record, unless some minimum threshold question of credibility appears." State v. Boge, 252 N.W.2d 411, 414 (Iowa 1977).
We must, therefore, analyze Kyle's various grounds for postconviction relief to determine which raise issues of material fact and must be remanded for an evidentiary hearing pursuant to section 663A.7, and which do not raise issues of material fact and were thus properly dismissed by the court.
A. Knowing, intelligent and voluntary guilty plea. In his application for postconviction relief, Kyle asserted, as a ground for relief pursuant to section 663A.2, that his 1964 guilty plea was not knowing, intelligent and voluntary. He pled two supporting reasons for this contention in his application:
A. Applicant was denied effective assistance of counsel by his counsel's failure to advise the Applicant that a confession elicited from him on the day of his arrest would not be admissible at trial.
B. The decision to plead guilty was not made by the Applicant but by his parents and his attorney, without meaningful consultation and advice.
In his December 31, 1980, supplementation of record Kyle further stated, by affidavit,
We discuss Kyle's effective assistance of counsel and confession claims in divisions I(E) and I(B), respectively, infra, and see no need for analysis of these claims here. Rather, we focus on whether the claim, that his parents and counsel made the decision that Kyle should enter the guilty plea, raises a material issue of fact preventing summary disposition of the claim. We find that it does.
A criminal defendant's right to due process of the law under U.S.Const. amend. XIV is violated unless the record discloses that he "voluntarily and understandingly entered his pleas of guilty." Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 244, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 1713, 23 L.Ed.2d 274, 280 (1969). In State v. Boone, 298 N.W.2d 335, 337 (Iowa 1980), we said:
A defendant who enters a plea of guilty waives several constitutional rights. 7 For the waiver to be valid under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, there must be an intentional relinquishment of known rights or privileges. Johnson v. Zerbst, 304 U.S. 458, 464, 58 S.Ct. 1019, 1023, 82 L.Ed. 1461, 1466 (1938). If a defendant's guilty plea is not equally voluntary and knowing, it has been obtained in violation of constitutional guarantees of due process and is therefore void. McCarthy v. United States, 394 U.S. 459, 463-64, 89 S.Ct. 1166, 1169, 22 L.Ed.2d 418, 423-24 (1969). The defendant must have a full understanding of the consequences of a plea before constitutional rights can be waived knowingly and intelligently. Boykin v. Alabama, 395 U.S. 238, 243-44, 89 S.Ct. 1709, 1712-13, 23 L.Ed.2d 274, 279-80 (1969).
In his application and supplementation of record, Kyle claimed that he did not make the...
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