Joshua David Mitchell v. State of Iowa

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: February 7, 2024
• Docket: 22-1354
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 22-1354 Filed February 7, 2024

JOSHUA DAVID MITCHELL, Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Patrick R. Grady,

Judge.

Joshua Mitchell appeals the denial of his second application for

postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.

Jeffrey L. Powell of Keegan, Tindal & Jaeger, PLC, Iowa City, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Nicholas E. Siefert, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Considered by Schumacher, P.J., Badding, J., and Doyle, S.J.*

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

(2024). 2

DOYLE, Senior Judge.

Joshua Mitchell appeals the denial of his second application for

postconviction relief (PCR). He contests the knowing and voluntary nature of the

guilty pleas he entered more than one decade ago and claims actual innocence.

Because Mitchell fails to prove either claim, we affirm.

Mitchell was arrested and charged with two counts of second-degree sexual

abuse in 2011. He pled guilty two months later, and the district court sentenced

him to concurrent terms of twenty-five years in prison. Mitchell did not directly

appeal his convictions, but he filed PCR applications. In 2016, the district court

denied Mitchell relief in his first PCR action. We affirmed that ruling on appeal.

Mitchell v. State, No. 16-1674, 2017 WL 6033878, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 6,

2017).

While his first PCR action was on appeal, Mitchell started a second PCR

action. His counsel acknowledged that Mitchell’s second PCR application

repeated claims that were litigated in the first proceeding. But PCR counsel argued

that Mitchell did not previously litigate one claim and could not have raised it within

the three-year limitation period of Iowa Code section 822.3 (2011). Counsel cited

an affidavit in which Mitchell claimed that he remembered “important exculpatory

evidence” after stopping medication in 2017.1 But he did not file that affidavit. So

the PCR court provided notice that it intended to dismiss the application and gave

1 The State alleged that Mitchell sexually abused two children between January 2010 and April 2011. Mitchell’s affidavit recalls a department of human services investigation of physical injuries to the victims’ sibling two weeks before his arrest. The victims were present during that investigation, and the department did not find either victim showed signs of abuse. 3

Mitchell thirty days to respond. When no response came, the court dismissed the

application as untimely under section 822.3.

Mitchell appealed, claiming his PCR counsel was ineffective by failing to

present the PCR court with the affidavit and inform him of the proposed dismissal.

Before we decided the appeal, the supreme court issued two decisions that would

impact the outcome: Schmidt v. State, 909 N.W.2d 778, 795 (Iowa 2018) (allowing

a freestanding claim of actual innocence under the Iowa Constitution for

convictions resulting from guilty pleas), and Allison v. State, 914 N.W.2d 866, 891

(Iowa 2018) (holding that a PCR application alleging PCR counsel provided

ineffective assistance in presenting a claim of ineffective assistance of trial counsel

in a prior PCR proceeding “relates back to the timing of the filing of the original

PCR” application for purposes of Iowa Code section 822.3).2 Interpreting

Mitchell’s claim of a “lack of evidence” for his conviction as a claim of actual

innocence and guided by the new decisions, we “reverse[d] the summary dismissal

of Mitchell’s PCR claim and remand[ed] to the district court for further proceedings

and consideration of Mitchell’s claim that PCR counsel was ineffective.” Mitchell

v. State, No. 18-0112, 2018 WL 4913670, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 10, 2018).

Mitchell twice amended his PCR application following remand. After delays,

the PCR trial was held in March 2022. The PCR court denied Mitchell’s

application, finding his claim that he did not knowingly and intelligently enter his

guilty pleas was merely a “re-branding of his previous claims in his first PCR.” The

2 A legislative amendment has since abrogated the relation-back doctrine. See 2019 Iowa Acts ch. 140, § 34 (codified at Iowa Code § 822.3 (Supp. 2019)); Brooks v. State, 975 N.W.2d 444, 446 (Iowa Ct. App. 2022) (recognizing abrogation). 4

PCR court also expressed doubt as to whether the evidence Mitchell relied on for

his actual-innocence claim qualified as newly discovered. In any case, the court

noted that the new evidence “is only impeaching.” After weighing it against the

evidence of his guilt, including Mitchell’s admissions that he sexually abused the

victims, the court found that Mitchell failed his burden of proving the new evidence

would have changed the result of the criminal proceeding.

Mitchell challenges the denial of his second PCR application. He claims his

mental health and medications prevented him from knowingly and intelligently

pleading guilty and led him to plead guilty despite his innocence. He also raises a

freestanding claim of actual innocence. We review denials of PCR applications for

correction of errors at law and the deprivation of constitutional rights de novo. See

Sothman v. State, 967 N.W.2d 512, 522 (Iowa 2021). We give weight to the district

court’s findings, especially when they pertain to witness credibility. See id.

We agree that res judicata bars Mitchell’s challenge to the knowing and

intelligent nature of his guilty pleas. We noted in the first PCR appeal that “a review

of the medical records made the day before the plea proceedings indicate[s]

Mitchell was not experiencing any side effects from the prescribed medications

such that his plea would be involuntary or unintelligently made.” Mitchell, 2017 WL

6033878, at *2. On this basis, we found that “Mitchell has failed to prove trial

counsel was ineffective in allowing him to plead guilty or that his PCR counsel was

ineffective in not pursuing a ruling on whether Mitchell’s medications affected his

ability to render his plea.” Id. “[A] postconviction proceedings is not available to

relitigate issues previously adjudicated.” State v. Jackson, 199 N.W.2d 102, 102–

03 (Iowa 1972); accord Holmes v. State, 775 N.W.2d 733, 735 (Iowa Ct. App. 5

2009) (“A post-conviction proceeding is not intended as a vehicle for relitigation,

on the same factual basis, of issues previously adjudicated, and the principle of

Res judicata bars additional litigation on this point.” (cleaned up)).

We also agree that Mitchell has not met his burden of showing actual

innocence. To succeed, Mitchell “must show by clear and convincing evidence

that, despite the evidence of guilt supporting the conviction, no reasonable fact

finder could convict the applicant of the crimes for which the sentencing court found

the applicant guilty in light of all the evidence, including the newly discovered

evidence.” Schmidt, 909 N.W.2d at 797. But “Schmidt does not apply to overcome

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

innocence was available to the applicant 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). Although Mitchell claims he could not remember until recently, the

exculpatory evidence he relies on existed before his arrest. Even ignoring that

Mitchell’s claim falls outside the limitation period, Mitchell cannot show by clear

and convincing evidence that no reasonable factfinder could have found him guilty.

That investigators looking into physical abuse of another child by a different

perpetrator did not find the victims showed signs of physical or sexual abuse does

not overcome the evidence of Mitchell’s guilt when that evidence includes

Mitchell’s own admissions.

Because both claims Mitchell raises fail, we affirm the denial of his second

PCR application.

AFFIRMED.