State of Iowa v. Dairramey Christopher Moore

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

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No. 25-0604

Filed September 2, 2026

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State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee,

v.

Dairramey Christopher Moore, Defendant–Appellant.

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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Clinton County, The Honorable Patrick A. McElyea, Judge.

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AFFIRMED

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Leah Patton of Patton Legal Services, LLC, Ames, attorney for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Nicholas E. Siefert, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee.

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

Opinion by Bower, S.J.

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BOWER, Senior Judge.

Dairramey Moore appeals his conviction and sentence for assault causing bodily injury. He challenges two of the court’s evidentiary decisions, argues he should have been allowed to cross-examine as he wanted, claims insufficient evidence supported his conviction, and claims the court abused its discretion at sentencing. We affirm.

I. Background Facts & Proceedings

In this case, the State and the defense presented vastly different accounts of an assault perpetrated against Steven Lehmkuhl on July 4, 2024. As a general summary, there was a gathering of people at Ashley Stahl’s home that evening, including Moore and Lehmkuhl. By 12:30 the next morning, Lehmkuhl was at the hospital with head injuries, reporting an assault to the police. At the time, Lehmkuhl “didn’t remember” a timeline of the events leading to his hospital trip. The emergency room doctor diagnosed swelling and cuts on Lehmkuhl’s head, arm and chest bruising, and rib fractures. Lehmkuhl’s bloodwork tested positive for amphetamines, benzodiazepines, and opiates—each of which could have been caused by legal or illegal substances.

Lehmkuhl’s version. In his testimony, Lehmkuhl described going to the Fourth of July party with his friend, Spencer Smith. They went to Stahl’s house, and Lehmkuhl followed Smith to the basement, where Moore was sitting with Stahl, Smith’s ex-girlfriend Tonay Hofman, a third woman, and Josh Fuller. The women left “about as fast as [Lehmkuhl] sat down”; Lehmkuhl borrowed Fuller’s charger for his phone. According to Lehmkuhl, Moore then moved to sit across from him and “said that [Lehmkuhl] was going to die.” After a bit of “coward” and “act like a man” talk with an option of going upstairs from Moore, Lehmkuhl refused to go upstairs thinking he’d

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be safer with Smith and Fuller nearby. The next thing he remembered, Moore hit him in the head and face. At one point he described being on the ground while Moore was hitting and kicking him in the head, ribs, and stomach, and seeing Fuller and Smith “staring at the ground.” Lehmkuhl said he was “knocked out” a couple times, and he tried to “play dead.” Lehmkuhl denied trying to fight back because Moore was “a pretty tough guy” and he thought he had a better chance of escaping if he didn’t fight back.

Some time after he was knocked out, Lehmkuhl regained consciousness alone in the basement. He discovered his phone was gone, went upstairs, and took off up the street. He walked out of the area until he found someone who offered him a ride to the hospital. Lehmkuhl used the driver’s phone to call his girlfriend, Lindsey Howard, and told her Moore had tried to kill him. Lehmkuhl described struggling to breathe, that his “ribs hurt really bad,” he had a headache, his eye was swollen shut, and he had a hard time talking at the hospital. He was in the hospital for two nights, and he estimated it took him another eight-to-twelve weeks to heal after that.

Howard testified in agreement with Lehmkuhl’s story to the extent she had knowledge. Howard had been dating Lehmkuhl for several years. The year before she started dating Lehmkuhl, she dated Moore for about six months. She testified that night Lehmkuhl called her from a phone number she didn’t know, telling her Moore had “beat him up” and wanting her to meet him at the hospital. When she got there, Lehmkuhl “was walking, pacing back and forth in the waiting room.” She described his head as “very swollen and almost contorted looking,” with bruises on his arms and face.

Other versions. Fuller testified there were “a lot of people” at Stahl’s house spread out through the “upstairs, downstairs, garage” that evening. According to Fuller, he and a “bunch of people left” shortly after Lehmkuhl

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arrived. Smith also testified he left a few minutes after he and Lehmkuhl arrived at the house. Smith had taken the vehicle from Stahl’s house later that evening and found Lehmkuhl’s phone in the car the next day. Hofman remembered being in the basement with Fuller, Stahl, and Moore, but she and Stahl left shortly after Lehmkuhl and Smith arrived.

In October, a police officer interviewed Moore at the county jail. At the beginning of the interview, the officer read Moore his Miranda rights. During the interview, Moore agreed he knew who Lehmkuhl was, but he said he didn’t remember what he was doing on July 4 that year.

Based on Lehmkuhl’s version of events, the State charged Moore with attempted murder and willful injury resulting in serious injury—each a felony. After considering all the evidence, the jury found Moore guilty of assault and assault causing bodily injury. The sentencing court merged the two counts into the assault causing bodily injury count—a serious misdemeanor—and imposed a 240-day jail sentence (with credit for time served) and a fine. Moore appeals.

II. Analysis

A. Evidentiary Claims. Moore raises evidentiary issues relating to the admission of testimony about his jail interview and Lehmkuhl’s call to Howard. He also challenges the court sustaining an objection to his cross- examination of Howard and Lehmkuhl about a prior incident he alleges served as motivation for the claimed assault.

We review hearsay claims for legal error. State v. Newell, 710 N.W.2d 6, 18 (Iowa 2006). “Subject to the requirement of relevance, the district court has no discretion to deny the admission of hearsay if it falls within an exception, or to admit it in the absence of a provision providing for

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admission.” Id. We review other evidentiary admissibility decisions for an abuse of discretion. State v. Dessinger, 958 N.W.2d 590, 597 (Iowa 2021). But confrontation claims are reviewed de novo. Id.

Jail interview. Moore argues the officer’s testimony about his October police interview was “not relevant” because his statements did not indicate a consciousness of guilt and were unfairly prejudicial. In particular, Moore claims, “The interview occurred while [Moore] was incarcerated in the county jail. The reference to [Moore]’s incarceration was prejudicial.” But at the time of the testimony, the only renewed objection described was a hearsay objection, not an Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.403 objection asking the court to weigh the probative value of the evidence against the risk of unfair prejudice.

There was no reference to incarceration during the officer’s very brief testimony—she simply stated the interview took place at the jail. And the video of the interview, which might have given visual cues of incarceration, was not admitted. During an earlier offer of proof, the court had ruled the statements fell within “an opposing party statement” and were not hearsay. See Iowa R. Evid. 5.801(d)(2). We agree with the district court’s determination. And, even if the rule 5.403 objection had been made, the brief interview description would not rise to the level of “unfair prejudice” for exclusion. We find no abuse of discretion.

Hearsay. Moore also asserts the court erred in admitting Howard’s testimony that Lehmkuhl called her on his way to the hospital and identified Moore as his assailant—Moore claims this statement was hearsay and did not fall under the excited utterance exception. After an offer of proof, the court found the statements qualified under the excited utterance exception:

[T]he Court considers the time elapse between the event and the statement, the extent to which questioning elicited the statements that

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would otherwise not have been volunteered, age and condition of the declarant, the characteristics of the event being described, and the subject matter of the statement. I think considering all of these factors it’s pretty clearly an excited utterance. While certainly there’s some evidence that maybe the defendant wasn’t under as much stress as one might think considering the nature of the assault, he certainly—at least the testimony from Ms. Howard is that he was certainly under the stress of the event, on the way to the hospital, having a hard time breathing, it was close in time as to when the event happened. According to Ms. Howard there was no questioning about those statements, and his statements aligned with what happened or were focused on what happened as far as the subject matter.

“An excited utterance is ‘[a] statement relating to a startling event or condition, made while the declarant was under the stress of excitement that it caused.’” Dessinger, 958 N.W.2d at 601 (quoting Iowa R. Evid. 5.803(2)). “The statement must be made under the excitement of the incident and not on reflection or deliberation.” Id.

Considering the statements surrounding the call—the immediacy after the assault, it was during Lehmkuhl’s drive to the emergency room, and his physical condition at the time—we see no abuse of discretion in the court’s considered decision to admit the testimony. See State v. Atwood, 602 N.W.2d 775, 782 (Iowa 1999) (establishing factors to consider in an excitedutterance determination).

Witness motivation. Next, Moore urges the district court denied him his right to a fair trial by refusing to allow him to cross examine Howard and Lehmkuhl about “their motive to lie” stemming from her 2020 role as a confidential informant, Moore’s role in prompting Howard’s role as confidential informant, and Lehmkuhl’s resulting criminal charges. According to Moore, that information would have shown the jury they had a motive to lie about Moore’s guilt on the assault charges here.

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When addressing the issue at trial, the court ruled Lehmkuhl’s criminal conviction “was not a proper impeachment of or proper scope of cross-examination” for Howard, any conversation between Howard and Moore would be hearsay, and Howard couldn’t testify about Lehmkuhl’s motivation. The court specified Lehmkuhl could “be impeached with the conviction but not the [initial] charge,” and it was “fair game on cross- examination to ask about the relationship and why there may or may not be bad blood or disagreement or whatnot.” But during Lehmkuhl’s testimony, while he admitted the criminal charge, he denied Moore or Howard having anything to do with it. Moore’s counsel did not press further.

The “[t]rial court . . . determines the scope of cross-examination, exercising its sound discretion.” State v. Martin, 385 N.W.2d 549, 552 (Iowa 1986). While we allow some latitude in cross-examination, “safeguards are erected in the form of specific requirements that the instances inquired into be probative of truthfulness or its opposite . . . [and] not be outweighed by danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of issues, or misleading the jury.” Id. at 553 (cleaned up) (emphasis omitted). We only disturb the court’s ruling “when its discretion has been obviously abused.” Id. at 552. The court’s ruling generally aligns with our rules of evidence, which limit cross- examination to “the subject matter of the direct examination and matters affecting the witness’s credibility” and the use of specific instances of witness conduct as character evidence. Iowa Rs. Evid. 5.611(b), 5.608; see State v. Jones, No. 04-0021, 2006 WL 334046, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 15, 2006). The information sought was highly prejudicial against the witnesses and only tied to the case through speculation and conjecture of motive. We affirm the court’s ruling.

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B. Sufficiency of Evidence. Moore claims the district court should have granted his motion for a directed verdict because insufficient evidence supports finding he committed the assault against Lehmkuhl. The State argues the evidence viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict is sufficient.

We review sufficiency-of-the-evidence challenges for correction of errors at law. State v. Brown, 32 N.W.3d 774, 778 (Iowa 2026). “[W]e are highly deferential to the jury’s verdict” and are bound by it if “supported by substantial evidence.” Id. (cleaned up). “We view the evidence in the light most favorable to the State[,] including legitimate inferences and presumptions that may fairly and reasonably be deduced from the record evidence.” Id. (cleaned up).

The core of Moore’s sufficiency argument is the jury should not have believed Lehmkuhl’s testimony and should have given greater weight to other witnesses. But “it is not our place to resolve conflicts in the evidence, to pass upon the credibility of witnesses, to determine the plausibility of explanations, or to weigh the evidence; such matters are for the jury.” State v. Brimmer, 983 N.W.2d 247, 256 (Iowa 2022) (cleaned up). Here, the jury clearly weighed the evidence Moore urges, believed some but not all Lehmkuhl’s claims, and determined Moore assaulted Lehmkuhl. He did not ask the court to reweigh the evidence through a motion for new trial, and even with an appropriate motion we do not reweigh evidence on appeal. See State v. Stendrup, 983 N.W.2d 231, 246 (Iowa 2022).

There was sufficient evidence presented to establish a fact question for the jury to decide, so the court did not err in denying the directed verdict. And considering the evidence presented, we affirm the jury’s verdict.

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C. Sentence. Last, Moore urges the court abused its discretion by sentencing him to “substantial jail time,” claiming the court considered the original charges. The State counters that this argument is moot, as Moore would have discharged the sentence by December 2025 even absent the timeserved credit noted by the sentencing court. Moore does not challenge he had completed the sentence, only arguing an exception based on the possibility of the issue recurring yet evading review. We find this challenge moot. See State v. Willey, No. 24-0887, 2025 WL 855733, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 19, 2025).

AFFIRMED.