State of Iowa v. Jon Thomas Kucharo

• Court: Court of Appeals of Iowa
• Decided: December 20, 2023
• Docket: 23-0255
• Status: Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-0255 Filed December 20, 2023

STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

JON THOMAS KUCHARO, Defendant-Appellant. ________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Meghan Corbin,

Judge.

A defendant appeals the denial of his motion to dismiss the trial information.

AFFIRMED.

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

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

General, for appellee.

Considered by Greer, P.J., and Schumacher and Ahlers, JJ. 2

AHLERS, Judge.

Jon Kucharo was charged by trial information with multiple crimes. He

moved to dismiss the trial information on the basis that the prosecutor’s signature

on the information did not constitute a valid signature because it consisted of “/s/”

and a blank underlined space on one line followed by a signature block. In his

motion, Kucharo admitted the motion was not filed within forty days of the filing of

the trial information, but he asked that his late filing be excused for good cause—

the claimed good cause being that the attorney was not Kucharo’s first appointed

attorney, and the new attorney had been appointed only forty-one days before filing

the motion.

The district court denied the motion on the basis that it was untimely.

Kucharo appeals. He contends (1) the signature on the trial information was

invalid; (2) the forty-day deadline to object to a trial information found in the rules

of criminal procedure controls over the thirty-day deadline to object to an invalid

signature found in the rules of electronic procedure; and (3) even if the thirty-day

deadline applies, the district court abused its discretion by declining to extend the

deadline.

Our court has previously expressly rejected Kucharo’s first two arguments.

In State v. Mendoza, we held signatures on a trial information need not be verified

and that an identical signature format to that used here1 satisfied the signature

requirements of our electronic rules. ___ N.W.2d ___, 2023 WL 6293861, at *2–

3 (Iowa Ct. App. 2023). We also held that, even if the signature was defective in

1 This case and Mendoza involve the same county attorney’s office. 3

some way, the defendant was not entitled to dismissal because the claimed defect

did not prejudice the defendant. Id. at *3 (citing Iowa Rules of Criminal

Procedure 2.4(7) and 2.5(5)). In reaching these conclusions, we also held that the

thirty-day deadline for challenging the validity of a signature imposed by Iowa Rule

of Electronic Procedure 16.305(7) controlled over the forty-day deadline for

challenging a trial information imposed by Iowa Rule of Criminal

Procedure 2.11(4). Id. at *2.

Based on our holding in Mendoza, we find no merit in Kucharo’s first two

arguments. And, because we reject Kucharo’s arguments for dismissal on the

merits, the issue of whether the district court should have found good cause to

extend the deadline for filing his motion is moot, as Kucharo’s motion would be

properly denied even if it had been timely.