State of Iowa v. Charles Joseph Beyer

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: September 17, 2025
• Docket: 24-0699
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-0699 Filed September 17, 2025

STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

CHARLES JOSEPH BEYER, Defendant-Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Dubuque County, Mark T. Hostager,

Judge.

A defendant appeals his conviction for possession of methamphetamine,

second offense, following a conditional guilty plea, challenging the denial of his

motion to suppress. AFFIRMED.

Gary Dickey of Dickey, Campbell, & Sahag Law Firm, PLC, Des Moines, for

appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Zachary Miller, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee.

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

Langholz, JJ. 2

LANGHOLZ, Judge.

While Charles Beyer was detained by a police officer waiting to confirm

whether warrants for his arrest were still active, Beyer pulled a wallet from his

pocket and tried to give it to a nearby woman. The officer told Beyer he was not

allowed to do that and took the wallet. After receiving word that the arrest warrants

were indeed still active, the officer completed Beyer’s arrest and searched Beyer’s

person and the wallet Beyer had tried to pass off to the woman. The officer found

two small bags of methamphetamine in the wallet. And Beyer was eventually

charged with possession of methamphetamine, second offense, in violation of

Iowa Code section 124.401(5) (2023).

Beyer moved to suppress the methamphetamine found in his wallet under

the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and article I, section 8, of

the Iowa Constitution, arguing that the warrantless search was unreasonable. The

district court denied his motion, holding that the search fell within the search-

incident-to-lawful-arrest exception to the warrant requirement. Beyer then entered

a conditional guilty plea that was approved by the district court.1 And he now

appeals the denial of his motion to suppress, arguing that the search-incident-to-

lawful-arrest exception does not apply mainly because the State failed to prove

that (1) he was “within reaching distance of the wallet at the time the officer

1 We have jurisdiction over a conditional guilty plea reserving an issue for appeal

only when “entered by the court with the consent of the prosecuting attorney and the defendant or the defendant’s counsel” and “when the appellate adjudication of the reserved issue is in the interest of justice.” Iowa Code § 814.6(3). Because Beyer’s appeal of the suppression ruling “is the same issue reserved by the conditional guilty plea, and success on appeal of that issue would give [Beyer] some relief,” the interest-of-justice jurisdictional threshold is satisfied. State v. Scullark, 23 N.W.3d 49, 53 (Iowa 2025). 3

searched it”; (2) “the wallet posed a threat to [the officer’s] safety”; and (3) “the

search was necessary to either gather or prevent the destruction of evidence of

the crime of arrest.”

But after the parties completed their briefing, our supreme court decided

State v. Scullark, 23 N.W.3d 49 (Iowa 2025). As Beyer noted in his routing

statement,2 Scullark involved “substantially similar” issues about the scope of the

search-incident-to-lawful-arrest. And the supreme court’s resolution of those

issues defeats Beyer’s arguments here.

The defendant in Scullark argued that the search-incident-to-lawful-arrest

exception under our state and federal constitutions did not extend to permit the

search of a fanny pack that the defendant was wearing at the time of his arrest but

then handed over to a companion before being handcuffed. See Scullark,

23 N.W.3d at 52. Like Beyer, that defendant argued that the exception should not

apply because he was unable to access the fanny pack at the time it was searched

and the officers could not show they were looking for a weapon or evidence of the

offense of arrest. See id. at 53. But the supreme court rejected those arguments

under both constitutions and reaffirmed that officers may constitutionally “search

the arrestee’s person and any items in the arrestee’s actual and exclusive

possession at the time of the arrest or immediately preceding it” without needing

any “additional justification beyond lawful arrest.” Id. at 59–60. The supreme court

also clarified that “handing the item to a companion before the officer can search

2 The supreme court had granted further review when Beyer filed his brief. 4

him” has no constitutional relevance because “a reasonable search of the person

should not depend on games of ‘hot potato.’” Id. at 60–61.

Following Scullark, because Beyer’s wallet was in his pocket “at the time of

the arrest or immediately preceding it,” the search of Beyer’s wallet “was

reasonable as a search of [Beyer’s] person, and no additional justification for the

search was required beyond [Beyer’s] lawful custodial arrest.” See id. at 61. It

was thus a reasonable search under the search-incident-to-lawful-arrest exception

to the warrant requirement of both the Fourth Amendment and article I, section 8.

We thus affirm the district court’s denial of the motion to suppress and Beyer’s

conviction.

AFFIRMED.