State v. Smith, No. 8-523/07-1406 (Iowa App. 8/27/2008)
| Decision Date | 27 August 2008 |
| Docket Number | No. 8-523/07-1406,8-523/07-1406 |
| Parties | STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. TAMMY LYNN SMITH, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Iowa Court of Appeals |
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Humboldt County, Allan L. Goode, Judge.
Tammy L. Smith appeals her conviction, following jury trial, for child endangerment resulting in serious injury. AFFIRMED.
Mark C. Smith, State Appellate Defender, and Patricia Reynolds, Assistant State Appellate Defender, for appellee.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Martha E. Boesen, Assistant Attorney General, and Jennifer A. Benson, County Attorney, for appellant.
Considered by Miller, P.J., and Vaitheswaran and Eisenhauer, JJ.
Tammy L. Smith appeals her conviction, following jury trial, for child endangerment resulting in serious injury. She contends there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction, the district court erred in denying her motion to suppress, and her trial counsel was ineffective. We affirm.
The record reveals the following facts. On January 30, 2006, Humboldt County Deputy Sheriff Brian Ricklefs and an Iowa Department of Human Services (DHS) employee, Kay Paulson, went to Tammy Smith's (Smith) residence to speak with Smith regarding her four-year-old son Gabriel's fracture to his arm which had occurred on January 24, 2006. Gabriel is developmentally delayed.
Smith told Deputy Ricklefs she was at home with Gabriel and her two-year-old son John Ross on the date in question. She stated she was washing dishes in her kitchen when John Ross started flipping the basement lights on and off. The light switch was located at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. Smith closed the door to the basement and took John Ross into the bedroom. When she returned she heard a whimper and when she opened the door to the basement she discovered Gabriel standing there. Smith stated she could tell that his arm was injured because it was "just hanging." This incident happened at approximately 7:00 p.m.
While at Smith's residence Deputy Ricklefs took photographs of the basement steps and floor. He later described the basement floor as uneven.
The photographs show the basement stairway is an open, wooden stairway. Smith's education consisted of attending the twelfth grade but not graduating high school. She described herself as being a slow learner and Deputy Ricklefs agreed it was obvious she was somewhat slow. Her IQ was later determined to be eighty-five.
Smith told Ricklefs that after discovering Gabriel injured she used a rag to help support Gabriel's arm and called her husband, John Smith (John), who was at work at Godfather's Pizza. John was on a delivery at the time but returned her call when he arrived back at the restaurant and immediately left work, telling his boss one of his children was hurt. When John arrived home Smith dialed 911. Smith first spoke to the dispatcher, then at some point she gave the phone to John and he spoke to the dispatcher.
John carried Gabriel into the emergency room at the Trimark Physician's Group on the evening of January 24, 2006. Dr. Sarmini Suriar, internist and pediatrician, treated Gabriel in the emergency room. She observed that his right forearm was deformed and obviously injured. After ordering x-rays and administering pain medication, Dr. Suriar tried to determine what had happened. Because Gabriel is developmentally delayed and non-communicative he was unable to tell the doctor what happened. Smith thus gave Dr. Suriar Gabriel's history, stating that she had been in the basement getting clothes out of the dryer with Gabriel standing next to her. The next thing she knew he was on the floor crying and she knew his right forearm was hurt because it was swollen. Smith stated she did not see what happened because she had been distracted by John Ross flipping the lights off and on from the stairway. She denied that Gabriel tripped on anything.
The x-ray Dr. Suriar ordered showed three fractures of Gabriel's right forearm. Fractures included a comminuted fracture to the outer bone, near the elbow; a fracture to the outer bone near the hand; and a fracture to the inner bone. Gabriel also had an open wound related to the arm fractures. Suriar transferred Gabriel to an orthopedic surgeon in Des Moines. Dr. Suriar was suspicious of the story Smith told about how Gabriel got hurt because it was not consistent with the type of injuries he had sustained. Thus, a nurse reported the injuries to DHS.
Dr. Cassim Igram is an orthopedic surgeon who was on-call at Mercy Hospital in Des Moines when Gabriel arrived. Again, because Gabriel could not communicate with Dr. Igram, the doctor took Gabriel's history from Smith. She told him Gabriel sustained injuries from a fall in the basement. Igram referred the case to his colleague who specialized in pediatric orthopedics because the break was so severe. Dr. Igram was also suspicious of Smith's explanation of how the injuries occurred because they were not consistent with a slip and fall.
Dr. James Metts is the pediatric physician who attended to Gabriel's pain management at Mercy. Smith told Metts that Gabriel fell on the cement floor when he tried to take clothes out of the dryer.
Dr. Jeffrey Farber is the pediatric orthopedist who operated on Gabriel's arm on January 26, 2006. Prior to surgery, Farber met with Gabriel but he also could not communicate with him. Thus, Dr. Farber took Gabriel's history from his parents, who told him Gabriel was injured by falling down the stairs. Farber testified that Gabriel had breaks in both the radius and the ulna, consisting of two breaks in the distal forearm and one break in the proximal forearm; had one dislocation in the proximal forearm; and also had a fracture of the humerus, the upper arm. He further stated it was unusual to see a four-year-old suffer all of these breaks in one arm due to a slip and fall. He testified that to a reasonable degree of medical certainty (1) breaks such as Gabriel's could happen from an adult applying physical force to a child's arm, (2) it was not likely for such types of injuries to happen from a mere slip and fall, and (3) it was not likely for such types of injuries to happen from falling down stairs. Either Dr. Farber or the pediatric nurse reported the injuries to DHS.
Deputy Ricklefs became aware of the incident and Gabriel's injuries on January 30, 2006, and, as noted above, went to the Smith home with DHS worker Kay Paulson to talk to Smith about the incident. When Paulson confronted Smith with the fact that at the hospital she had told a different story of what had happened, Smith explained she had done so because she was fearful her children would be taken away and that her husband might leave her. After speaking with Smith regarding the incident Ricklefs arrested her for child endangerment resulting in serious injury.
Counselor and social worker Jill Coleman met Gabriel when she assisted in placing him in foster care after Smith's arrest, and also supervised visits between Gabriel and Smith. Coleman described Gabriel as the "the most unsocialized child" she had ever met and described him as an "animal child" because he was not verbal, but only grunted, moaned and pointed to communicate.
DHS sought, and the court ordered, psychological and parental evaluations of Smith. Dr. Amy Mooney, Ph.D., met with Smith twice in July 2006 to complete the evaluations. When asked about how Gabriel broke his arm, Smith told Mooney he broke his arm in a front loading washing machine when the washer was on the spin cycle and that she just "froze up" when he hurt his arm. She further stated to Mooney that the lock on the washer did not work but her son could not open it. Mooney agreed she did not know whether Smith actually witnessed the incident.
The State charged Smith, by trial information, with child endangerment resulting in serious injury, in violation of Iowa Code sections 726.6(1)(a) and 726.6(5) (2005). Smith filed a motion to suppress, asserting the statement she made to Dr. Mooney regarding how Gabriel was injured should not be allowed into evidence because the statement was not voluntary as it was the product of threats. A hearing was held on the motion shortly before trial. During trial the court denied the motion on the record, concluding the statements Smith made to Mooney were voluntary and admissible. The jury found Smith guilty as charged.
Smith appeals, contending there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction, the district court erred in failing to grant her motion to suppress, and her trial counsel was ineffective for failing to timely file a meritorious motion to suppress.
Our scope of review of sufficiency-of-evidence challenges is for correction of errors at law. State v. Lambert, 612 N.W.2d 810, 813 (Iowa 2000). In reviewing such challenges we give consideration to all the evidence, not just that supporting the verdict, and view such evidence in the light most favorable to the State. Id. A jury's findings of guilt are binding on appeal if supported by substantial evidence. State v. Leckington, 713 N.W.2d 208, 213 (Iowa 2006). If a rational trier of fact could conceivably find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidence is substantial. Lambert, 612 N.W.2d at 813.
Smith first claims there was insufficient evidence to support her conviction. More specifically, she contends the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that she "knowingly acted in a manner creating a substantial risk to [Gabriel's] physical, mental, or emotional health or safety." For the following reasons, we conclude there is sufficient evidence for a rational jury to find beyond a reasonable doubt that Smith, the only adult at home when the injuries occurred, did knowingly act in a manner that created such a substantial risk.
As set forth above, Smith provided a total of five...
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