State v. Richardson
| Decision Date | 17 February 2017 |
| Docket Number | No. 14-1174,14-1174 |
| Citation | 890 N.W.2d 609 |
| Parties | STATE of Iowa, Appellee, v. Daimonay Darice RICHARDSON, Appellant. |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Mark C. Smith, State Appellate Defender, Rachel C. Regenold (until withdrawal), then Theresa R. Wilson, Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Martha E. Trout, Assistant Attorney General, and Jerry Vander Sanden, County Attorney, for appellee.
After pleading guilty to second-degree murder, the defendant was ordered to pay $150,000 in mandatory restitution to the estate of the victim. See Iowa Code § 910.3B (2013). The defendant was fifteen years old at the time of the offense. We are asked to decide whether Iowa law authorized the sentencing court to consider the age of the defendant and related circumstances before ordering this restitution.
If not, we must determine whether mandatory minimum restitution violates the defendant's rights under article I, section 17 of the Iowa Constitution.
For the reasons discussed herein, we conclude that a recent change in Iowa sentencing law does not affect mandatory minimum restitution under Iowa Code section 910.3B. We further conclude that section 910.3B is not unconstitutional either as applied to all juvenile homicide offenders or as applied to this defendant. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment and sentence of the district court and the decision of the court of appeals.
On June 10, 2013, officers with the Cedar Rapids Police Department were dispatched to an apartment complex after tenants and maintenance supervisors noticed a foul odor and flies emanating from an apartment. Inside the apartment, officers discovered a decomposing body later identified as that of Ronald Kunkle. Kunkle had been stabbed to death.
During the ensuing investigation, officers learned that the defendant, fifteen-year-old Daimonay Richardson, and her nineteen-year-old boyfriend D'Anthony Curd had used Kunkle's electronic benefit transfer (EBT) card to make purchases at a gas station on May 19. Richardson had been kicked out of her home a few months before1 and was residing in another apartment in the same complex. Richardson had an arrangement with the tenant of that apartment in which she traded babysitting services for permission to stay there and apparently for alcohol and drugs. Curd also lived in the same apartment part of the time.
On August 19, officers interviewed Richardson regarding Kunkle's death. Richardson eventually confessed that she helped Curd murder Kunkle on or about May 18. According to Richardson, Curd had been with Kunkle in Kunkle's apartment that day and said that he saw Kunkle with $2000 in cash. Curd then developed a plan for the two of them to go back to Kunkle's apartment, stab Kunkle to death, and take the $2000. Curd said to Richardson, "[Y]ou're going to have to stab him first, that way if we get caught, you will get in trouble if you snitch on us...."
Curd grabbed two knives out of the butcher block, gave one to Richardson, and they went back to Kunkle's apartment. Richardson had her knife in her front pocket; Curd had his in his back pocket.
Inside Kunkle's apartment, Curd and Kunkle played beer pong for about five minutes, at which point Curd signaled to Richardson to stab Kunkle. She stabbed Kunkle once in the neck, and after that Curd jumped on Kunkle and—in Richardson's words—"started stabbing him everywhere, literally, thigh, legs, stomach, shoulder ..., everywhere...." As Curd was stabbing Kunkle, Richardson also stabbed Kunkle two more times. When Kunkle's body was found, he had approximately thirty-seven stab wounds
, the great majority of them inflicted by Curd. In a subsequent proffer, Richardson said that the stabbing was entirely Curd's plan and "would have never happened" otherwise. However, she acknowledged that Curd did not force her to go along with his plan.
Once Kunkle was dead, Richardson helped Curd move the body and clean up the crime scene. Curd was unsuccessful in finding the $2000 but retrieved Kunkle's billfold which contained an EBT card. Both Richardson and Curd then returned to the apartment where Richardson had been staying. They took showers and changed their clothes. Richardson continued to live in that apartment until she was arrested for Kunkle's murder months later.
Richardson was charged with first-degree murder. See Iowa Code § 707.2. Before trial, Richardson entered into a plea agreement with the State. The agreement called for Richardson to give a proffer statement and later to testify at Curd's first-degree murder trial. If the State concluded Richardson's proffer testimony was truthful, she would be permitted to plead guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree murder, a class "B" felony in violation of Iowa Code section 703.1 and section 707.3. If the State concluded the proffer statement was not truthful, there would be no plea agreement but the statement could not be used in the future for any purpose, including impeachment.
Richardson's proffer interview took place on February 5, 2014, in the presence of both of her counsel. The next day, Richardson pled guilty to second-degree murder pursuant to the plea agreement. There was no agreement between the State and Richardson on sentence. Richardson understood that the State would be seeking a fifty-year sentence with a mandatory thirty-five years of incarceration. She was free to advocate for a much more lenient sentence. In the guilty plea colloquy, Richardson admitted that she had actively participated with Curd in stabbing Kunkle, that Kunkle died as a result of being stabbed, and that she had acted with malice aforethought.
A sentencing hearing took place on May 28, May 30, and June 6. The presentence investigation report recommended that Richardson be sentenced to fifty years in prison. The sentencing hearing revealed that Richardson had been raised by her mother as one of several siblings. When Richardson was ten, the family moved from the Chicago area to Iowa. At the age of thirteen, Richardson was raped. Richardson did not tell anyone because she did not trust anyone and did not think they would care.
Richardson's grandmother, with whom Richardson was quite close, passed away around the same time. Richardson began abusing marijuana and alcohol. Richardson's performance in school deteriorated, and she had to repeat seventh grade. In 2012, Richardson became increasingly involved with Curd, who was then eighteen and an older and somewhat controlling figure in her life. Richardson's mother and stepfather tried unsuccessfully to keep Richardson away from Curd. When Richardson was forced to leave the family home in the spring of 2013, she was homeless for a period of time before moving into the apartment where she was living at the time of Kunkle's murder.
At the sentencing hearing, Richardson also presented expert testimony from a forensic psychologist who opined that Richardson would not likely have perpetrated the offense by herself and had been subjected to numerous adverse developmental factors. These factors included her age at the time of the offense, transgenerational family dysfunction, residential transience, sexual assault, early teen onset of alcohol and drug abuse, and victimization in a predatory relationship with the codefendant. The psychologist concluded that Richardson had a good potential for establishing a constructive, contributing adulthood and a low likelihood of future serious violence.
The court thus sentenced Richardson to an indeterminate term of incarceration not to exceed fifty years with twenty-five years of the sentence to be suspended. The court also ordered Richardson to pay $150,000 in restitution to the estate of Ronald Kunkle "[p]ursuant to Iowa Code section 910.3B." Richardson did not raise any objection to the $150,000 restitution award at the time of sentencing.
Nonetheless, on appeal, Richardson challenges only the $150,000 restitution award. Richardson contends the sentencing court had discretion under recently enacted Iowa Code section 901.5(14) (2014) to impose a lower amount of restitution and should have exercised that discretion to reduce the award. Alternatively, Richardson maintains section 910.3B, to the extent it mandates a $150,000 restitution award, violates article I, section 17 of the Iowa...
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