Bobby Ray Woodberry v. State of Iowa

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: June 18, 2025
• Docket: 23-1956
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-1956 Filed June 18, 2025

BOBBY RAY WOODBERRY, Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Paul D. Scott, Judge.

The applicant appeals the summary dismissal of his sixth application for

postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.

Gregory F. Greiner, West Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., Ahlers, J., and

Potterfield, S.J.*

*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206

(2025). 2

POTTERFIELD, Senior Judge.

Nearly thirty years ago, Bobby Woodberry was convicted of first-degree

murder and assault with intent to commit serious bodily injury; he was sentenced

to life in prison. Woodberry filed an unsuccessful direct appeal, on which

procedendo issued in March 1997. Accordingly, his three-year window to seek

postconviction relief (PCR) closed in 2000. See Iowa Code § 822.3 (2000). Yet

Woodberry filed this PCR application—his sixth—in July 2023. The district court

summarily dismissed it as time-barred.

Woodberry appeals, arguing New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen,

597 U.S. 1 (2022) is a new ground of law that he could not raise before, which

excepts him from the statute of limitations in section 822.3. “But [Woodberry] is

not challenging his conviction based on Bruen or any other new ground of fact or

law. His arguments based on Bruen are only a challenge to the statute of

limitations itself. So this exception to the statute of limitations does not apply to

[Woodberry’s] application.” Thongvanh v. State, No. 24-0783, 2025 WL 547744,

at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 19, 2025); Roach v. State, No. 24-0074, 2025 WL _____,

at *_ (Iowa Ct. App. May 21, 2025) (same).

Alternatively, Woodberry urges us to overrule our supreme court’s holding

that the statute of limitations in section 822.3 is constitutional. See Davis v. State,

443 N.W.2d 707, 710–11 (Iowa 1989) (“[D]ue process requires that the interest of

the state and the defendant be balanced in determining the reasonableness of a

period of limitations. . . . We believe that a three-year period after the conviction

or appeal is final is not unreasonable. We also believe the legislature, within its

sound discretion, may determine the proper limitation period.”). We cannot 3

overrule precedent from our supreme court. See State v. Beck, 854 N.W.2d 56,

64 (Iowa Ct. App. 2014).

We affirm the district court’s dismissal of Woodberry’s PCR application.

AFFIRMED.