State of Iowa v. Charles Ryan Fisher

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

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No. 25-0649

Filed September 2, 2026

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State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.

Charles Ryan Fisher, Defendant–Appellant.

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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Floyd County, The Honorable Chris Foy, Judge.

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AFFIRMED

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Joseph G. Bertogli, Des Moines, attorney for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Olivia D. Brooks, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee.

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Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.

Opinion by Buller, J.

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BULLER, Judge.

Charles Fisher appeals following his convictions for sexual abuse in the second degree and lascivious acts with a child. He argues his trial counsel was ineffective, and the district court should have granted a new trial after the jury viewed an unredacted recording during deliberations. We affirm.

Given the narrow issues raised on appeal, we give a somewhat abbreviated rendition of the facts. The victim was an eight-year-old thirdgrader as of trial, and she brought her stuffed animal “Bear-Bear” with her to the witness stand. She testified that Fisher did “weird stuff” to her, such as pull down her pants and lick her genitals and chest. She described the area he touched in part by pointing between Bear-Bear’s legs. She also described how Fisher would pull down his pants and show her his genitals—which she said looked “[l]ike a hot dog”—and touch himself. Fisher tried to get her to “lick it” but she said: “Ew, no.” He also tried to penetrate her—“put his, like, hot dog in my butt”—while she was playing video games. On crossexamination , when asked for more details, the victim explained that Fisher also touched her genitals: “he licked his finger and then went into my pee pee with it.”

The victim’s mother testified that the first thing the victim told her about the abuse was that Fisher “likes to lick me down there.” A pediatric nurse practitioner testified that the victim similarly pointed at her genitals and said “[h]e licked me with his tongue right here” and “[h]e licked his finger and rubbed it all around.” The victim also told the nurse practitioner that Fisher had shown her his “private part” and “got it all wet and tried to get it in my butt”; she said the “private part . . . looked like a sausage” and “made slimy wet” when he was “squishing” it. The victim explained “squishing” by demonstrating a gripping motion to the nurse practitioner.

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And she said Fisher had told her “sh-sh” about the abuse so she wouldn’t tell anyone. A forensic interviewer testified regarding the dynamics of child sexual abuse, and the jury watched a recording of the victim’s interview at a child protection center.

A police officer testified that he spoke with Fisher, who denied the abuse. Fisher’s then-girlfriend later called the child abuse hotline to report she believed Fisher was innocent, and someone else had abused the victim; the report did not make it past intake. Fisher testified at trial and again denied the abuse.

The jury found Fisher guilty as charged. After the jury returned its verdict, the court shared with the parties an incident reported by the court attendant. During deliberations, the jury encountered technology issues trying to play the video of the police officer’s body-cam. The court attendant tried to help by playing the video for the jury from the admitted exhibit, using her laptop. While listening to the video play, the court attendant realized that the video being played included a comment from Fisher that the court attendant believed was not on the video played in open court. The court attendant thought that, at most, twenty-to-thirty seconds of video played beyond what was played in open court.

The county attorney asked the court whether it had admonished the jury to disregard any portions of the video it heard during deliberations that were not also heard in open court. The court said it did not, the exhibit was taken to the jury room as submitted, and “[t]his was counsel’s responsibility.” The assistant attorney general, on behalf of the State, said there was no error because the additional portions were cumulative: the State had offered and admitted the entire video even though it only played portions at trial, and the police officer had testified to the statements anyway.

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Fisher’s attorney did not offer any questions, clarifications, or argument at the time. Three days later, defense counsel filed a motion for new trial, citing the jury’s exposure to “several seconds” of body-cam footage it should not have seen. The State resisted the motion.

At a later hearing, the court offered more context for what happened with the jury. The court explained that the court attendant alerted the court to the problem while the jury was still deliberating, but the court did not understand the full extent of the problem until after the jury was discharged. After conducting its own investigation, the court believed the jury had inadvertently received flash drives with both redacted and unredacted copies of all audiovisual exhibits. The court reviewed the recordings to determine the differences between the body-cam exhibit played in court and the twenty- to-thirty additional seconds heard by the jury. The court concluded it was “nothing of substance.”

The court eventually denied the motion for new trial on several bases, including Fisher’s failure to timely object when notified of the issue; that the court generally would have overruled any objection to additional portions of the exhibits, had Fisher objected during trial; and that the additional portions of the exhibits were not material and did not prejudice Fisher. The court repeatedly emphasized that what happened with the exhibits was a “mistake”—one in which the court believed it, the lawyers, and the court attendant all played a part. And the court ruled that it did “not believe that any of this extra material either viewed individually or taken in combination could reasonably be seen as affecting the verdict of the jury when [it] consider[ed] what this case was about and how it was presented by the State.”

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Fisher appeals, asserting trial counsel was ineffective in failing to investigate a potential alternative suspect and the district court erred in denying his motion for new trial. We consider each.

First, we summarily reject Fisher’s attempt to raise ineffectiveassistance claims on direct appeal. Any consideration of his argument is contrary to explicit legislative direction and supreme court precedent. See Iowa Code § 814.7 (2026); e.g., State v. Rutherford, 997 N.W.2d 142, 146 (Iowa 2023); State v. Newman, 970 N.W.2d 866, 869 (Iowa 2022); State v. Tucker, 959 N.W.2d 140, 151–52 (Iowa 2021).

Second, we recognize the standard of review for jury-misconduct claims is not entirely settled. See State v. Christensen, 929 N.W.2d 646, 658, 676–78 (Iowa 2019). Because the outcome of this appeal would be the same whether we review de novo or for abuse of discretion, we set this question aside. See id. at 677–78. Either way, “Iowa caselaw has long been reluctant to set aside jury verdicts on grounds of jury misconduct.” Id. at 674.

Assuming without deciding the evidence was extraneous,1 and assuming the jury viewed the additional twenty-to-thirty seconds of the

1 We question whether this jury actually received “extraneous” information. The district court, after reviewing a rough transcript, observed: “I think a fair reading of that record would have allowed the State to play the full original version of each recording without any redaction. During the trial, the defense raised no objection to the content of any part of any recording.” Our court considered an analog version of this digital problem in Pinegar v. State, No. 10-0775, 2012 WL 3026393, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. July 25, 2012), where a wallet was admitted into evidence that—unbeknownst to the parties—contained inculpatory handwritten notes. We affirmed the district court’s conclusion that the notes inside the wallet were not “extraneous” information because the wallet (and thus its contents) was admitted into evidence at trial. Pinegar, 2012 WL 3026393, at *3. Unfortunately, the parties in this appeal did not brief the issue of whether the evidence was “extraneous,” so we assume without deciding it was.

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body-cam video during deliberations, our analysis then turns on whether Fisher was prejudiced. The relevant three-part test requires (1) evidence of misconduct that consists solely of objective facts; (2) conduct that exceeds the tolerable bounds of jury deliberation; and (3) conduct that “was calculated to, and with reasonable probability did, influence the verdict.” State v. Cullen, 357 N.W.2d 24, 27 (Iowa 1984). Based on the objective evidence, the only arguably extraneous material the jury heard was twenty- to-thirty seconds of the interview with Fisher captured on the officer’s body camera. Even if we assume the jury heard slightly more than the court attendant reported, all the jury heard was an investigator saying the victim gave a “very detailed” report about the abuse. This is entirely cumulative with the officer’s in-court testimony, elicited by the defense on crossexamination , in which he said the victim “was very detailed” and gave “pretty much the same story” each time she described the abuse. It’s also a fair description of the record. Even if Fisher can satisfy the first two Cullen prongs, he cannot satisfy the last: cumulative evidence, presented to the jury accidentally rather than intentionally, is not conduct calculated to or likely to influence the verdict. Fisher did not carry his burden to demonstrate he was owed a new trial.

AFFIRMED.