State of Iowa v. Chad Michael Vice

CourtCourt of Appeals of Iowa
DecidedNovember 2, 2022
Docket21-0247
StatusPublished

This text of State of Iowa v. Chad Michael Vice (State of Iowa v. Chad Michael Vice) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Iowa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State of Iowa v. Chad Michael Vice, (iowactapp 2022).

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 21-0247 Filed November 2, 2022

STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

CHAD MICHAEL VICE, Defendant-Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Lee (North) County, Michael J.

Schilling, Judge.

A defendant appeals his convictions for first-degree burglary and assault

while participating in a felony. AFFIRMED.

Erin M. Carr of Carr Law Firm, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Genevieve Reinkoester, Assistant

Attorney General, for appellee.

Heard by Tabor, P.J., and Schumacher and Chicchelly, JJ. 2

TABOR, Presiding Judge.

A case of mistaken identity: that’s what Chad Vice calls his convictions for

first-degree burglary and assault while participating in a felony. Vice contends the

district court should not have given any weight to the victim’s identification of him

in a faulty photo array. He also challenges the admission of an out-of-court

statement by his cousin placing him near the crime scene.1

Viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the district court’s ruling

and giving due deference to its credibility findings, we find substantial evidence

that Vice committed these crimes. We agree with Vice that the court should have

sustained his hearsay objection. But we find the State overcame the presumption

of prejudice from that hearsay. Thus, we affirm his convictions.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings

On a May morning in 2019, Julie drove to her ex-husband’s house to pick

up their teenage daughter. She texted her daughter that she was parked outside.

A few minutes later, still looking down at her phone, in her peripheral vision Julie

saw a figure approaching. Assuming it was her daughter, Julie unlocked the car

doors so she could get into the passenger side. But the person came to the driver’s

door instead.

Looking up, Julie saw “a very angry person.” The man opened her car door

with one hand and brandished a switchblade in the other. From two feet away, the

intruder yelled “fucking piece of shit” as he lunged at her with the blade, aiming for

1 Vice also mentions a potential ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim. But such claims cannot be decided on direct appeal from a criminal proceeding and need not be preserved for postconviction relief. Iowa Code § 814.7 (2021). 3

her neck. Julie screamed and dropped her phone, prompting the man to look at

her and pull away. His demeanor changed, he apologized, and said she was the

“wrong person.” In that moment, Julie thought the man looked familiar. The man

then fled behind a neighboring house as Julie yelled: “Are you fucking kidding me?”

Julie ran into her ex-husband’s house and locked the door. Her daughter

was still inside and Julie told her to call 911. While waiting for police to arrive, Julie

and her daughter saw a man dressed in jeans and a black sweatshirt leave the

house next door. Her daughter filmed the man on her phone as he walked to a

maroon truck and drove away. Neither Julie nor her daughter saw his face.

Once Officer Dustin Fullhart arrived, Julie recounted what happened and

described her attacker as wearing a black hoodie, jeans, and a gray hat.2 She also

recalled that his eyes looked “a silver bluish” but “darker like he was mad.” From

the ten to fifteen seconds that she had to look at his face, Julie recalled the

“chiseledness of his jaw line” and that his “jaws were clenched.” Julie said he

“wasn’t clean shaven,” and instead had “scraggily” salt-and-pepper facial hair,

adding to an overall “disheveled” look. She originally thought the man might be

her ex-husband’s brother, but soon realized it was not. She then assumed the

man who just left the neighbors’ house was the attacker.

After talking to Julie, Officer Fullhart looked behind the house next door but

did not find the suspect or evidence of the attack. He spoke to that house’s

occupants: Lynsey Gilpin, his wife, their daughter, and a family friend. None of

2 At trial, Julie testified the man was wearing a grey hoodie instead. 4

them matched Julie’s description of the assailant and none recalled that anyone

left their house.

When the officer returned to Julie, he viewed her daughter’s phone video of

the man leaving the neighbors’ house. Julie also provided the plate number of the

maroon truck. Equipped with that video, Fullhart returned to the Gilpin residence

to ask again if anyone had left the house. Lynsey Gilpin then remembered that

Kane Simmons left just before law enforcement arrived. Gilpin described Simmons

as “unstable” and “a little bit crazy.” The family provided Simmons’s phone number

and told the officer where he was headed. Before leaving, Fullhart told them to

call police if Simmons returned.

After Fullhart left, Gilpin went to the detached garage behind his house.

Inside, he saw a man hiding in the garage attic. While no lights were on, Gilpin

testified he was “seventy-five percent” sure it was his cousin, Vice.3 Startled, Gilpin

told the person in the attic he planned to call the police. When Gilpin left to call

911, the man ran off. When he connected with Officer Fullhart by phone, Gilpin

reported seeing Vice in his attic. It was then that the course of the investigation

changed with Vice becoming the prime suspect. Police returned to the crime

scene to search for Vice but did not find him. Fullhart also talked with Simmons

on the phone that day but ruled him out as a suspect based on their conversation,

as well as Gilpin placing Vice at the scene and Julie’s photo identification.

That same day, Officer Fullhart compiled a photo lineup to see if Julie could

identify her assailant. The lineup included six men, ages nineteen to forty-three

3 Gilpin and Vice hung out weekly, and Vice had been in his garage before. 5

years old, with Vice being the oldest. Each man appeared in two mugshots, one

facing forward and one profile, except for Vice who only had a forward-facing

photo. The lineup did not include a photo of Simmons. Fullhart met with Julie at

her home and gave her the photos all at once to see if she recognized anyone. He

told her the assailant may or may not be in the array. After studying the photos,

Julie pointed to the single image of Vice as the man who assaulted her. This

exchange was not recorded. Officer Fullhart recalled that after Julie picked that

photo, he mentioned the name Chad Vice. Julie couldn’t remember which of them

said Vice’s name first. But she then recognized Vice because they went to high

school together, though she had not seen him in ten to fifteen years.

After the photo identification, Fullhart interviewed Vice. Vice acknowledged

knowing Julie but denied assaulting her. Vice said that he did not know where he

was during the assault, blaming blackouts caused by diabetes and “not eating

right.” He conceded his health condition sometimes made him “wacky” and angry.

Officers arrested Vice two days later.

The State charged Vice with first-degree burglary and assault while

participating in a felony. While in jail, Vice placed eight phone calls during the

month of June, trying to craft an alibi through an acquaintance named Tara: “I don’t

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