State of Iowa v. Keith Michael Moss

Court of Appeals of Iowa·Decided January 11, 2023·No. 21-1301·Published

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 21-1301

Filed January 11, 2023

STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

KEITH MICHAEL MOSS, Defendant-Appellant.

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Hancock County, Gregg R. Rosenbladt, Judge.

A defendant appeals his convictions for second-degree sexual abuse.

AFFIRMED.

Nathan A. Olson and Christine E. Branstad of Branstad & Olson Law Office, Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Timothy M. Hau, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Heard by Bower, C.J., and Greer and Badding, JJ.

BADDING, Judge.

Keith Moss appeals his convictions for sexually abusing his daughter when she was ten years old. Casting the case against him as weak because of inconsistencies in the child’s retelling of the abuse, Moss claims the weight of the evidence is against the verdict. He also protests the court’s denial of his request for an in-camera review of the child’s cell phone, admission of subsequent bad acts against the child and drug use, and admission of testimony outside the minutes of testimony that he contends improperly bolstered the child’s credibility. We affirm these mostly discretionary decisions. I. Background Facts and Proceedings Moss has two daughters, both of whom live with their mother, her husband, and his son. Moss was absent for the first several years of his daughters’ lives. Once he reappeared, Moss began having visitation with them every other weekend at his mother’s house where he lived. Moss’s visitation with the children continued through the spring of 2019 and into that summer, when the children’s mother let Moss take them on an extended trip to Arizona. During that period of time, Moss’s oldest daughter said that he sexually abused her three times.

The child first disclosed her father’s abuse to an online friend she met on a cell phone app. She then shared a screenshot of that conversation with a “real life” friend at school. The disclosure eventually made its way to the child’s mother in November 2019, who asked her if it was true. The child testified, “At first I lied to her, but then soon enough I told her the truth.” She continued, “[S]ince I lied a bunch, technically, she wanted to make sure I was telling her the full truth, so eventually I just gave her the truth.” The mother agreed that she “did not quite”

believe her daughter at first. She explained that because she “couldn’t quite grasp the fact that her father could do this to her,” she did not immediately call the police.

But within a few days of the child’s conversation with her mother, the police did become involved, as did Kasey Christiansen, a child protective worker from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. Christiansen’s investigation at first focused on the stepfather because it was reported that he was the alleged perpetrator. When she met with the child alone, Christiansen asked her who had abused her to ensure that she was safe. The child said it was “[h]er father, Keith.” Christiansen arranged an interview for the child at a child advocacy center. Following that interview, the county sheriff asked an agent with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation for assistance with the investigation. The agent then conducted two interviews with Moss.

Because the initial report to the child protective worker named the stepfather as the alleged perpetrator, Moss had received a report from Christiansen saying the allegations were not founded as to the stepfather. So when the agent first met with him, Moss did not know that he was now the subject of the investigation. During the first interview, Moss told the agent that if his daughter “says something happened,” he believes her. He then gave the agent details about the sleeping arrangements at his mother’s house when the girls would visit. Moss said that he would usually give the children his bedroom and sleep on the couch. But sometimes, like when he was giving his daughters foot rubs in bed, he would fall asleep with them. Moss also confirmed that he took the girls on a vacation to Arizona the summer of 2019, and he admitted that he took some drugs while there.

These details fit with what Moss’s oldest daughter testified that her father did to her three times. The first two times took place in March and April 2019 at her grandmother’s house. On both occasions, the father slept in between the two children in his bedroom because the youngest “had a fear of the dark,” and they also “liked when he would massage our feet.” The first time the abuse happened, the oldest child said that she had fallen asleep but woke up when she felt Moss touching her breasts and vagina with his right hand. The same thing happened the next time, although that time, the child said Moss also “pulled out his [penis] and rubbed it on my butt, but it was over clothing.” And he tried to push her head towards his penis, which she said was hard. The child testified the third time was in July on the children’s trip to Arizona with Moss, their grandmother, and cousin. The oldest child testified that she again fell asleep in the same bed as her father and awoke to him touching her.

When confronted with these allegations in a second interview with the agent, Moss adamantly denied having sexually abused his daughter, even after watching a video of her from the child advocacy center detailing the abuse. He was arrested at the end of that interview and charged with two counts of sexual abuse in the second degree, in violation of Iowa Code sections 709.1, 709.3(2), and 903B.1 (2019), for the incidents that occurred in March and April 2019.

At trial, Moss’s attorney confronted the child with certain inconsistencies between her testimony and prior descriptions of the abuse. He pointed out that at the child advocacy center, the child said that her father touched her with two hands during the first incident, not just one as she testified at trial. Moss’s attorney also questioned the child about her statements at the interview that after the first

incident, she “got up, ran to the bathroom, and then went and started crying in” her grandmother’s room. The child agreed that was not true.

Moss’s attorney then turned to a TikTok video the child made. In the video, she is lip syncing along to a song called “I’m Yer Dad” by GRLwood. The caption of the video states: “#pov your daughter tries to tell you that her step dad cheated on you with your oldest daughter but you don’t believe her.” The child testified, “[i]t was a trend where we just talked about—well, POVs, which is point of view, and what it’s like for other people. So I just did it for fun and I went on the trend.” She said that “it was fictional for the most part” and that “I kind of felt it and it kind of reminded me of what my dad did to me, but I didn’t mean to make the video for that. I just went by the trend.” The child testified she used a stepfather in the caption to the video “because a lot of people were putting stepdad, not biological, so [she] just went with stepdad.” She testified her stepfather has done nothing sexual to her and that it was Moss who sexually abused her.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

State of Iowa v. Keith Michael Moss, (iowactapp 2023).

State of Iowa v. Keith Michael Moss (State of Iowa v. Keith Michael Moss) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Brady v. Maryland
373 U.S. 83 (Supreme Court, 1963)
State v. Pepples
250 N.W.2d 390 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1977)
State v. Ellis
578 N.W.2d 655 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1998)
State v. Payton
481 N.W.2d 325 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1992)
State v. Grant
722 N.W.2d 645 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2006)
Hamann v. State
324 N.W.2d 906 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1982)
State v. Munz
355 N.W.2d 576 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1984)
State v. Parker
747 N.W.2d 196 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2008)
State v. PUFFINBARGER
752 N.W.2d 32 (Court of Appeals of Iowa, 2008)
Hyler v. Garner
548 N.W.2d 864 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1996)
State v. Rodriquez
636 N.W.2d 234 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2001)
State v. Reyes
744 N.W.2d 95 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2008)
State v. Casady
491 N.W.2d 782 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1992)
State v. Braun
495 N.W.2d 735 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1993)
State v. Hayes
532 N.W.2d 472 (Court of Appeals of Iowa, 1995)
State of Iowa v. Kenneth Osborne Ary
877 N.W.2d 686 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2016)
State of Iowa v. James Alon Shorter
893 N.W.2d 65 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2017)
State of Iowa v. Andrew Lee Russell
897 N.W.2d 717 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2017)
David R. Desimone v. State of Iowa
803 N.W.2d 97 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 2011)
State v. Musso
398 N.W.2d 866 (Supreme Court of Iowa, 1987)