State v. Doe

• Decision Date: 05 August 2020
• Docket Number: No. 19-1327,19-1327
• Parties: STATE of Iowa, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Jane DOE, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: Iowa Court of Appeals

949 N.W.2d 658 (Table)

STATE of Iowa, Plaintiff-Appellee,

v.Jane DOE, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 19-1327

Court of Appeals of Iowa.

Filed August 5, 2020

Adrienne Loutsch of Iowa Legal Aid, Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Katie Krickbaum, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Considered by Bower, C.J., and Doyle and Schumacher, JJ.

SCHUMACHER, Judge.

This appeal arises from a district court order denying a motion to expunge a criminal case dating from 2011. The charges originally present in the case were consolidated into a different case number in which the appellant pleaded guilty to several but not all of the counts charged. On appeal, we consider whether the language of Iowa's expungement statute, codified at Iowa Code chapter 901C (2019), treats a transfer of charges from one case to another as a dismissal of the charges from the transferor case for purposes of a motion to expunge the transferor case. We conclude a complete "transfer" or "merger" of charges from one case number into another results in the charges in the transferor case being "otherwise dismissed" within the meaning of Iowa Code section 901C.2(1)(a)(1).

Background Facts and Proceedings

On September 28 and 29, 2010, two fraudulent checks were passed at a gas station in Indianola, Iowa. Officer Brian Sher of the Indianola Police Department met with the gas station company's investigator. Using video surveillance and a driver's license photo, Officer Sher identified the person passing the checks as the defendant here, Jane Doe.¹ Officer Sher requested and received a warrant for Doe's arrest. Doe was charged with two counts of forgery, which were given the case number that is the focus of this appeal. We refer to this case as case A. The defendant accumulated additional forgery charges around the same time, for a total of seven charges. In a second case number, which we refer to as case B, a single additional count of forgery was charged for an offense allegedly committed on September 25, 2010. A third case number, which we refer to as case C or the "omnibus case," held an additional four counts of forgery. Case A, which holds two counts of forgery, was initiated on October 19, 2010. Case B was initiated on October 20, 2010. Case C was initiated on October 25, 2010.

On July 20, 2011, the State filed a motion in case C with the caption "Application to Merge." The motioned requested that the court "merge" cases A and B into case C. In support of the motion, the State asserted that cases A and B "originated from a common scheme" and that "[j]udicial economy warrants the merger" of the first two cases into the third. The motion tracked the language of Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.6(1), which provides that,

Two or more indictable public offenses which arise from the same transaction or occurrence or from two or more transactions or occurrences constituting parts of a common scheme or plan, when alleged and prosecuted contemporaneously, shall be alleged and prosecuted as separate counts in a single complaint, information or indictment, unless, for good cause shown, the trial court in its discretion determines otherwise.

The court granted the motion the next day, saying that cases A and B "are merged into" case C. Case C then became the omnibus case in which a global disposition was reached. The court's order for merger was filed in case A.

On September 6, 2011, the State filed a trial information in case C charging only six, not seven, counts of forgery. The 2010 dates of these offenses were: Count I, September 25; Count II, September 25; Count III, September 28; Count IV, September 28; Count V, September 29; and Count VI, September 29.

On October 10, 2011, Doe pleaded guilty to counts I, II, and III in case C. Counts IV, V, and VI were dismissed.

In 2015, the Iowa Legislature enacted new legislation, codified at Iowa Code chapter 901C, that allows a defendant to apply for expungement of charges in certain circumstances. 2015 Iowa Acts ch. 83, § 1; see also 2016 Acts ch. 1073, §§ 183–84, 188 (making clarifying amendments). Seeking to take advantage of chapter 901C, Doe filed a motion, dated June 8, 2019, to expunge case A. Doe's motion was based on a form created by Iowa Legal Aid. One of the statements in the form motion was "My charges were dismissed, or I was acquitted, on 7/21/2011." Doe supplied the date in her own hand.

On July 10, 2019, the district court issued an order denying Doe's motion seeking expungement of case A. The court said,

This case was never dismissed. Instead, it was merged into [case C].

Code section 901C.2(1)(a)(1) states that expungement is permissible only if "[t]he criminal case contains one or more criminal charges in which an acquittal was entered for all criminal charges, or in which all criminal charges were otherwise dismissed."

Neither an acquittal nor a dismissal was ever entered in this case. Although a charge or charges from this case may have been ultimately dismissed in [case C], expungement of those charges is not permitted because not all charges in that case were ultimately dismissed. Consequently, the motion is hereby denied.

(First alteration in original). Doe timely appealed from the denial of her motion to expunge case A.

Standard of Review

"We review issues of statutory interpretation for correction of errors at law." State v. Doe , 903 N.W.2d 347, 350 (Iowa 2017) (Doe I ) (quoting Rhoades v. State , 848 N.W.2d 22, 26 (Iowa 2014) ).

Discussion

The narrow issue presented on appeal is whether a district court's order "merging" charges from one case into another case results in the charges in the transferor case being "otherwise dismissed" within the meaning of Iowa Code section 901C.2(1)(a)(1). The relevant provisions of section 901C.2(1)(a)(1) provide:

Except as provided in paragraph "b", upon application of a defendant or prosecutor in a criminal case, or upon the court's own motion in a criminal case, the court shall enter an order expunging the record of such criminal case if the court finds that the defendant has established that all of the following have occurred, as applicable:

(1) The criminal case contains one or more criminal charges in which an acquittal was entered for all criminal charges, or in which all criminal charges were otherwise dismissed.

Since the enactment of Iowa Code section 901C.2(1), the Iowa Supreme Court has been called upon to interpret such on three separate occasions. State v. Doe , 943 N.W.2d 608 (Iowa 2020) (Doe III ); State v. Doe , 927 N.W.2d 656 (Iowa 2019) (Doe II ); Doe I , 903 N.W.2d 347. Doe argues that, in light of the Iowa Supreme Court's 2017 decision, which held that expungement inquiries must be conducted on a case-number-by-case-number basis, the State's abandonment of the charges in case A results in those charges being "otherwise dismissed" within the meaning of section 901C.2(1)(a)(1). See Doe I , 903 N.W.2d at 354–55. The State not only disagrees that the court's treatment of the charges in the instant case should be considered dismissal, it asserts that Doe never even received charges in this case, since only a criminal complaint was filed prior to the "merger," not a trial information.

We reject the State's argument that because no trial information was filed prior to the transfer of the charges to case C Doe was never "charged" in the instant case. Section 901C.2 forms part of Title XVI of the Iowa Code, definitions for which are codified at section 801.4. Section 801.4(3) defines the word "charge" for purposes of Title XVI: " ‘Charge’ means a written statement presented to a court accusing a person of the commission of a public offense, including but not limited to a complaint , information, or indictment." (Emphasis added). We conclude that based on this definition a criminal complaint suffices to bring "charges" against a defendant for purposes of section 901C.2. The complaints filed by Indianola Police Officer Sher alleging Doe committed forgery in violation of Iowa Code section 715A.2 (2009) suffice to have brought "charges" against Doe within the meaning of that word as used in section 901C.2 (2019).

We next turn to consider the practical effect of the district court's July 21, 2011 order "merging" three cases under the number of the omnibus case. Following the order, the State never moved to dismiss or further prosecuted the instant case. The case was essentially closed by the court's order "merging" the cases. Doe motioned for expungement, filing her motion just weeks shy of nine years after the court's "merging" order. Cases A, B, and C remain searchable under Doe's true name on the Iowa's public court records database, available at the web address iowacourts.state.ia.us. The "Disposition Status" of cases A and B are listed as "TRANSFERRED." In case A, the two charges for forgery, a class "D" felony, have the "adjudication" designation of "not filed."

Thus, although the State's "Application to Merge" motion and the court's order granting that motion both used the term "merger," the use of the term "merger" does not precisely reflect the reality of the court order's effect. The consequence of the order was an amendment of case C's trial information adding several counts of forgery and the application of the designation "transferred" to cases A and B. The charges in cases A and B are still visible under their original case numbers with an "adjudication" status of "not filed," and the case numbers are still searchable.

We now consider the question of statutory interpretation presented on appeal, one of first impression. Does the transfer of charges from one case to another—an action which may alternatively be called an amendment, modification, or merger—result in those charges being "otherwise dismissed" from the transferor case for purposes of section 901C.2 ? We hold that such a transfer results in the charges in the transferor case being "otherwise dismissed" for purposes of section 901C.2.

At the outset, we recognize that ...