Bryan Lamarr Mitchell v. State of Iowa

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: October 15, 2025
• Docket: 24-1793
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-1793 Filed October 15, 2025

BRYAN LAMARR MITCHELL, Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Jeffrey D. Bert, Judge.

An applicant for postconviction relief appeals the dismissal of his application

as time-barred. AFFIRMED.

Austin Jungblut of Parrish Kruidenier, L.L.P., Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Genevieve Reinkoester, Assistant

Attorney General, for appellee State.

Considered without oral argument by Schumacher, P.J., and Badding and

Langholz, JJ. 2

LANGHOLZ, Judge.

A jury convicted Bryan Mitchell of first-degree murder and related offenses

for shooting and killing a man outside a Davenport apartment building. We

affirmed on direct appeal. See State v. Mitchell, No. 05-0126, 2006 WL 132083,

at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 19, 2006). Eighteen years later, Mitchell filed this—his

second—postconviction-relief (“PCR”) application asserting many claims about his

criminal trial and one claim that his PCR counsel was ineffective. The district court

dismissed the application as time-barred under Iowa Code section 822.3 (2024)

because it was filed more than three years after Mitchell’s conviction became final.

And Mitchell appeals the dismissal of his ineffective-assistance-of-PCR-counsel

claim, arguing that we should adopt “due process equitable tolling” for

section 822.3 and remand for the district court to decide whether he could avoid

dismissal under that standard. But assuming that Mitchell’s argument is

preserved, it is foreclosed by the text of section 822.3 and governing precedent.

We thus affirm.

I. Error Preservation

The State argues that we should not reach the merits because Mitchell

failed to preserve error by asking the district court to apply “due process equitable

tolling.” True, Mitchell did not use those exact words. He argued that applying

section 822.3 would violate his equal-protection and due-process rights under the

Iowa Constitution. In the district court, the State recognized that this “argument

basically amounts to a request for equitable tolling of the statute of limitations.”

And the district court ruled on the argument, holding: “Equitable tolling does not

apply to Section 822.3. Absent application of equitable tolling, Mitchell cannot 3

avoid dismissal under Section 822.3.” Whether this was enough to preserve error

is a close call. But the merits are not. So we assume that error is preserved and

proceed to the merits.

II. Equitable Tolling

Under section 822.3, with exceptions not relevant here, an application for

postconviction relief “must be filed within three years from the date the conviction

or decision is final or, in the event of an appeal, from the date the writ of

procedendo is issued.” Iowa Code § 822.3. When our supreme court adopted an

equitable doctrine tolling that deadline “from the time of the filing of the first petition

for PCR until the first PCR proceeding’s conclusion,” Allison v. State, 914 N.W.2d

866, 891 (Iowa 2018), the legislature quickly abrogated that decision. See

Sandoval v. State, 975 N.W.2d 434, 436 (Iowa 2022). So the statute now also

provides: “An allegation of ineffective assistance of counsel in a prior case under

this chapter shall not toll or extend the limitation periods in this section nor shall

such claim relate back to a prior filing to avoid the application of the limitation

periods.” Iowa Code § 822.3.

Nothing in this statutory text gives us leave to toll the three-year deadline

for Mitchell’s ineffective-assistance-of-PCR-counsel claim. Indeed, it expressly

rejects tolling for such a claim. See id. And except for the brief period between

Allison and the statutory amendment, neither the supreme court nor our court has

ever recognized equitable tolling of section 822.3’s statute of limitations. To the

contrary, we have repeatedly rejected doing so. See James v. State, 858 N.W.2d

32, 33 (Iowa Ct. App. 2014) (rejecting argument that we should apply “the equitable

tolling doctrine to avoid the time-bar” of section 822.3); see also Smith v. State, 4

No. 19-0384, 2020 WL 110398, at *1 n.2 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 9, 2020) (collecting

unpublished cases). So absent a different constitutional command, we are bound

by the statute’s text and our published precedent to decline Mitchell’s invitation to

adopt equitable tolling.

And Mitchell’s argument that applying section 822.3 without equitable tolling

would violate Iowa’s due-process clause also runs into supreme court precedent

rejecting a due-process constitutional challenge to that statute. See Davis v. State,

443 N.W.2d 707, 710–11 (Iowa 1989). Relying on that precedent, we have

rejected similar arguments that equitable tolling is constitutionally required. See

McCoy v. State, No. 23-1286, 2025 WL 400745, at *3–4 (Iowa Ct. App.

Feb. 5, 2025). We do the same again here.

The district court properly dismissed Mitchell’s second PCR application as

time-barred under section 822.3.

AFFIRMED.