Edward Algenerio Campbell v. State of Iowa

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: January 9, 2025
• Docket: 23-1967
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-1967 Filed January 9, 2025

EDWARD ALGENERIO CAMPBELL, Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Mark R. Lawson,

Judge.

An applicant for postconviction relief appeals the dismissal of his application

as time-barred. AFFIRMED.

Daniel M. Northfield, Urbandale, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Martha E. Trout, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Considered by Greer, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ. 2

LANGHOLZ, Judge.

In 2016, a jury convicted Edward Campbell of first-degree burglary and

second-degree criminal mischief. See State v. Campbell, No. 16-0550, 2017 WL

2464070, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. June 7, 2017). We affirmed his convictions on direct

appeal, see id. at *10, and procedendo issued on August 3, 2017.

Six years later, Campbell applied for postconviction relief.1 In that

application, Campbell raised grievances about evidentiary rulings, jury

instructions, his counsel’s responsiveness, being denied discovery, and the

sheriff’s office purportedly failing to subpoena alibi witnesses. The State moved to

dismiss the application, arguing Campbell’s application was filed well outside the

three-year statute of limitations under Iowa Code section 822.3 (2023). Campbell

never resisted, and the district court dismissed the application as time-barred.

Campbell appeals, and we review for legal error. See Thongvanh v. State,

938 N.W.2d 2, 8 (Iowa 2020). On appeal, Campbell contends his application

asserts an actual-innocence claim. And he argues that such claims are not subject

to the three-year limitations period. Not so. Campbell cannot “overcome the

statute of limitations where the evidence put forward to support a claim of actual

innocence was available to [him] or could have been discovered with due diligence

within the limitations period.” Quinn v. State, 954 N.W.2d 75, 77 (Iowa Ct. App.

2020); see also Dewberry v. State, 941 N.W.2d 1, 5 (Iowa 2019).

1 This is Campbell’s third postconviction-relief application. Neither of his prior two applications alter our limitations analysis here. See Iowa Code § 822.3 (“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.”). 3

Campbell has not shown that his application is timely. His application,

though at times hard to parse, turns on events leading up to and during his criminal

trial—all of which Campbell knew or should have known within the limitations

period. See Iowa Code § 822.3 (providing the three-year “limitation does not apply

to a ground of fact or law that could not have been raised within the applicable time

period”). And so, his postconviction-relief application was properly dismissed as

time-barred.

AFFIRMED.