State v. Jackson-Douglass

Decision Date04 February 2022
Docket Number20-1530
PartiesSTATE OF IOWA, Appellee, v. VEIL JACOBY JACKSON-DOUGLASS, Appellant.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Iowa

STATE OF IOWA, Appellee,
v.
VEIL JACOBY JACKSON-DOUGLASS, Appellant.

No. 20-1530

Supreme Court of Iowa

February 4, 2022


Submitted November 17, 2021

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Bradley J. Harris, Judge.

The defendant challenges his conviction and sentence for sexual abuse in the third degree. AFFIRMED.

Richard Hollis, Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Genevieve Reinkoester, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

McDonald, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which Christensen, C.J., and Appel, Waterman, Mansfield, and Oxley, JJ., joined. Appel, J., filed a concurring opinion. McDermott, J., filed a dissenting opinion.

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McDONALD, JUSTICE.

Veil Jacoby Jackson-Douglass, age thirty five, sexually abused a fourteen-or fifteen-year-old child on multiple occasions and impregnated her. He entered a written guilty plea to the crime of sexual abuse in the third degree, a class "C" felony. After the district court imposed a prison sentence, Jackson-Douglass filed a pro se motion in which he explained he did not want to enter a guilty plea but instead wanted to enter an Alford plea. "An Alford plea allows a defendant to plead guilty to a crime without admitting to the underlying facts that establish the crime." State v. Rodriguez, 804 N.W.2d 844, 847 n.1 (Iowa 2011) (citing North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25 (1970)). The district court denied the pro se motion, and Jackson-Douglass filed a pro se notice of appeal. In this appeal, Jackson-Douglass contends the district court misinterpreted his pro se postjudgment motion, his counsel was ineffective in failing to ensure he entered an Alford plea and in failing to file a motion in arrest of judgment, and his sentencing hearing was defective because the district court failed to ask him if he knew of legal cause why judgment of sentence should not be pronounced.

I.

Before turning to the merits of the defendant's appeal, we must first address two jurisdictional issues. The first jurisdictional issue is whether the defendant timely perfected his appeal. To exercise an appeal as a matter of right, Jackson-Douglass was required to timely initiate his appeal. An appeal from a final judgment of sentence is initiated by "filing a notice of appeal with the clerk of the district court where the order or judgment was entered." Iowa R. App. P.

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6.102(2). The "notice of appeal must be filed within 30 days after the filing of the final order or judgment." Id. r. 6.101(1)(b). This rule is "mandatory and jurisdictional." Concerned Citizens of Se. Polk Sch. Dist. v. City Dev. Bd., 872 N.W.2d 399, 402 (Iowa 2015) (quoting Root v. Toney, 841 N.W.2d 83, 87 (Iowa 2013)). If a party does not timely file a notice of appeal, the court has no jurisdiction over the appeal and the matter must be dismissed. See id.

Here, Jackson-Douglass timely filed his pro se notice of appeal. However, Iowa Code section 814.6A(1) (2019) provides that "[a] defendant who is currently represented by counsel shall not file any pro se document . . . in any Iowa court" and further provides that a court "shall not consider, and opposing counsel shall not respond to, such pro se filings." When Jackson-Douglass filed his pro se notice of appeal, he was still represented by appointed counsel. Plea counsel never timely filed a notice of appeal on the defendant's behalf.

In light of section 814.6A and plea counsel's failure to timely file a notice of appeal, we had concerns regarding this court's jurisdiction over Jackson-Douglass's appeal. See, e.g., Colwell v. Iowa Dep't of Hum. Servs., 923 N.W.2d 225, 238 (Iowa 2019) ("It is a fundamental principle of our jurisprudence that a court has the inherent power to decide if it has subject matter jurisdiction over a matter."); State v. Stark, No. 20-1503, 2021 WL 4592246, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 6, 2021) (stating pro se notice of appeal was a nullity but granting delayed appeal); cf. Boring v. State, No. 20-0129, 2021 WL 2453045, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. June 16, 2021) ("However, the notice of appeal was again filed pro se while Boring was still represented by counsel. Accordingly, it was a document that could not

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be considered. It was a nullity, as the State claims. For that reason, the appeal is dismissed."). We requested that the parties provide supplemental briefing on the issue.

In their supplemental briefing, both parties recognized our caselaw allows a defendant a delayed appeal where the defendant expressed a good faith intent to appeal before the appeal deadline but failed to timely perfect the appeal due to state action or circumstances beyond the defendant's control. See Swanson v. State, 406 N.W.2d 792, 793 (Iowa 1987); State v. Anderson, 308 N.W.2d 42, 46 (Iowa 1981); Horstman v. State, 210 N.W.2d 427, 429 (Iowa 1973); State v. Wetzel, 192 N.W.2d 762, 764...

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