James Lee Mathias v. State of Iowa

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: December 3, 2025
• Docket: 24-1673
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-1673 Filed December 3, 2025

JAMES LEE MATHIAS, Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Stuart P. Werling,

Judge.

An applicant appeals the denial of postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.

R.E. Breckenridge (argued) of Breckenridge Law P.C., Ottumwa, for

appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Anagha Dixit (argued) and Linda J.

Hines (until withdrawal), Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee State.

Heard at oral argument by Tabor, C.J., and Badding and Sandy, JJ. 2

TABOR, Chief Judge.

James Mathias argues that he was wrongly convicted of carrying guns on

school grounds because his conduct was protected by the Second Amendment to

the United States Constitution and article I, section 1A of the Iowa Constitution.

But because he did not preserve error on this claim for postconviction relief (PCR),

there is nothing for us to decide.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings

In 2017, during a high school football game, Mathias was wending his way

through the parking lot, placing leaflets on car windshields. The lot was part of the

Brady Street Athletic Complex, owned and operated by the Davenport Community

School District. An off-duty police captain working security at the game

approached Mathias and discovered he had a firearm tucked in his waistband.

Because Mathias had a permit, the captain asked him to leave rather than arrest

him. But after the captain conferred with the Scott County Attorney, the State

charged Mathias with carrying a firearm on the grounds of a school in violation of

Iowa Code section 724.4B (2017).1

At his jury trial, Mathias moved for judgment of acquittal arguing insufficient

evidence that the parking lot fit the definition of school grounds. He also objected

to jury instructions defining “grounds of a school” because neither the statute nor

case law defined that phrase. The jury found Mathias guilty. He appealed.

On appeal, the supreme court found that the “‘grounds of a school’ can

include school district-owned athletic facilities that are not part of or built on the

1 Iowa Code section 724.4B prohibits the arming, carrying, or transporting of firearms on the grounds of a school, making it a class “D” felony. 3

land contiguous to the classroom building.” State v. Mathias, 936 N.W.2d 222,

233 (Iowa 2019). Under this finding, the supreme court affirmed the conviction.

In 2020, Mathias, representing himself, filed a one-sentence “demand” for

“postconviction relief on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel.” Mathias

also filed a brief in support of that demand, alleging both trial and appellate counsel

were ineffective in arguing the definition of school grounds in section 724.4B and

by not challenging the statute as unconstitutionally vague. In February 2024,

Mathias—through counsel—filed a supplemental PCR application, adding two

claims to the pro se filings. At his hearing, he advanced essentially three claims:

(1) prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective assistance of counsel relating to

counsel’s use of the phrase “safety demands” during arguments; (2) ineffective

assistance of counsel for not contesting vagueness; and (3) a direct challenge to

the constitutionality of the statute under the Second Amendment’s right to keep

and bear arms.

After the hearing, the district court denied relief. The court found the

prosecutorial misconduct claim failed as a matter of law because it could have

been raised on direct appeal. See Iowa Code § 822.8 (2020). As for the

ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims, the court found Mathias failed to show

that either attorney breached an essential duty or that he was prejudiced by their

alleged omissions. Finally, the court rejected the Second Amendment claim

because the Iowa Supreme Court had decided the Brady Street Athletic Complex 4

constituted school grounds, which are “sensitive places” in which a state can

regulate guns.2

On appeal, Mathias raises a single issue: did the district court err in failing

to find ineffective assistance of counsel when his trial attorney did not argue that

Iowa Code section 724.4B violated his constitutional right to carry a firearm?

II. Analysis

As the State contends, we can begin and end our analysis with error

preservation. Mathias failed to preserve error because his PCR application did not

use ineffective assistance of counsel as the vehicle to advance his gun-rights

claim. Instead, he directly attacked the statute’s constitutionality. The State claims

Mathias cannot shift gears on appeal to frame his gun-rights claim as faulty

representation by counsel. As the State’s attorney insisted during oral argument,

it matters how Mathias presented the claim.

In response, counsel for Mathias defended error preservation at oral

argument. He suggested that because the district court rejected the direct

constitutional challenge, it would have also rejected the corresponding ineffective-

assistance claim because trial counsel has no obligation to raise a meritless claim.

See State v. Lopez, 872 N.W.2d 159, 169 (Iowa 2015).

We do not find Mathias’s argument convincing. “Nothing is more basic in

the law of appeal and error than the axiom that a party cannot sing a song to us

that was not first sung in trial court.” State v. Rutledge, 600 N.W.2d 324, 325

2 Citing New York Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 28 (2022), the

district court wrote that it was “inclined to view the modern epidemic of school gun violence as one of the ‘various crises of human affairs’ to which the Second Amendment can ‘be adapted.’” 5

(Iowa 1999). In Mathias’s PCR trial, he separated his gun-rights claim from his

allegations of ineffective assistance of counsel. In its ruling, the district court also

addressed that constitutional challenge as a freestanding claim. But in this appeal,

Mathias couches the challenge as ineffective assistance of counsel. Because this

is not how Mathias presented the issue at trial nor how the district court decided it,

there is no ineffective-assistance ruling regarding his gun-rights claim to review.

With nothing to review, we cannot reach the merits of the claim.

AFFIRMED.