STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff - Appellee, vs. RODNEY NEIL HEEMSTRA , Defendant - Appellant.
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IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 8-416 / 07-0983
Filed October 29, 2008
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
RODNEY NEIL HEEMSTRA,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Warren County, Gary G. Kimes,
Judge.
Defendant appeals from his conviction of voluntary manslaughter.
AFFIRMED.
Joseph J. Hrvol, P.C., Council Bluffs, and David E. Richter, Council Bluffs,
for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Darrel Mullins and Douglas D.
Hammerand, Assistant Attorneys General, and Bryan Tingle, County Attorney,
for appellee.
Heard by Vogel, P.J., and Mahan and Miller, JJ.
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MAHAN, J.
Rodney
Heemstra
appeals
following
his
conviction
of
voluntary
manslaughter in violation of Iowa Code section 707.4 (2001). He contends the
district court erred in denying his motion to dismiss. We affirm.
Heemstra contends the Iowa Supreme Court’s reversal of his conviction of
first-degree murder in State v. Heemstra, 721 N.W.2d 549 (Iowa 2006)
(Heemstra I), constituted an acquittal such that his retrial was barred on grounds
of double jeopardy, collateral estoppel and/or due process. All of defendant’s
contentions rely upon his interpretation that our supreme court has concluded
there were “insufficient facts to support either the State’s felony murder or
premeditated murder theories.”
The basis for the reversal of Heemstra’s conviction for first-degree murder
was legal error, not factual insufficiency. Heemstra I, 721 N.W.2d at 558. The
Heemstra I court noted that it was defendant’s contention that the faulty jury
instruction “does not fit the statutory definition of willful injury and cannot provide
the basis for felony murder. In fact, [the instruction] does not describe a felony at
all.” Id. at 553. The Heemstra I court stated that the defendant’s objection to the
jury instruction alerted the district court to “the problem inherent in the felonymurder instruction”:
[I]f the jury found Heemstra pointed the gun at Lyon intending to
cause serious injury and that serious injury resulted, it could find
felony murder, despite the fact that the gun pointing was not a
forcible felony for purposes of felony murder and without proof of
willfulness, deliberation, and premeditation.
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Id. at 554. The court found the instruction legally erroneous. The above-quoted
statement simply recognizes that an act that does not constitute a forcible felony
cannot be a predicate for a felony-murder conviction.
The court rejected the State’s harmless error argument. The court states,
“The validity of a verdict based on facts legally supporting one theory for
conviction of a defendant does not negate the possibility of a wrongful conviction
of a defendant under a theory containing legal error.”
Id. at 558 (citations
omitted) (emphasis added). Because the Heemstra I jury returned a general
verdict, the court found it was required to reverse his first-degree murder
conviction and remand for a new trial. Id. at 558.
We find that the supreme court did not consider whether there were facts
sufficient to sustain a conviction under a theory of premeditated murder.
Double Jeopardy.
Normally, when error occurs at trial resulting in a
reversal of a criminal conviction on appeal, double jeopardy principles do not
prohibit a retrial.
State v. Dullard, 668 N.W.2d 585, 597 (Iowa 2003) (citing
Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U.S. 33, 38, 109 S. Ct. 285, 289, 102 L. Ed. 2d 265, 272
(1988)). Heemstra attempts to place himself within the exception:
when the
defendant’s conviction is reversed on grounds that the evidence was insufficient
to sustain the conviction, retrial is barred on double jeopardy grounds. Dullard,
668 N.W.2d at 597. We have already concluded that the Heemstra I court did
not address the sufficiency of the evidence of a conviction based on
premeditated murder, and therefore double jeopardy principles are not at issue.
See generally Lockhart v. Nelson, 488 U.S. 33, 109 S. Ct. 285, 102 L. Ed. 2d
265.
4
Collateral Estoppel.
“When an issue of ultimate fact has once been
determined by a verdict and final judgment, that issue cannot again be litigated
between the same parties in any future lawsuit.” State v. Butler, 505 N.W.2d
806, 808 (Iowa 1993) (quoting Ashe v. Swenson, 397 U.S. 436, 443, 90 S. Ct.
1189, 1194, 25 L. Ed. 2d 469, 475 (1970)). This principle of “collateral estoppel”
is embodied in the guarantee against double jeopardy, but mandates a separate
analysis. Butler, 505 N.W.2d at 809. The test has been described in Ashe:
Where a previous judgment of acquittal was based on a general
verdict . . . this approach requires a court to examine the record of
a prior proceeding, taking into account the pleading, evidence,
charge, and other relevant matter, and conclude whether a rational
jury could have grounded its verdict upon an issue other than that
which the defendant seeks to foreclose from consideration.
397 U.S. at 444, 90 S. Ct. at 1194, 25 L. Ed. 2d at 475-76 (footnotes and
citations omitted) (emphasis added).
Heemstra claims that Heemstra I determined issues of ultimate fact on
both felony and premeditated murder theories. He argues, “In Heemstra I, issues
of malice, willfulness, deliberation, and premeditation were resolved against the
State, thereby foreclosing the possibility of re-litigating these same issues at new
trial.” We again reject this premise and find his argument without merit. The
supreme court did not address the factual sufficiency of conviction under a theory
of premeditated of murder. What it did consider was whether the felony-murder
jury instruction was legally erroneous. The State was not thereby foreclosed
from retrying defendant for first-degree premeditated murder.
Due Process. Finally, the defendant claims that in his previous trial he
was improperly subjected to alternative charging. He would have us determine
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that had his prior conviction been based on “two consecutive counts of first
degree murder . . . there would be no doubt about the verdict.” This appeal is
from a subsequent trial in which Heemstra was convicted of voluntary
manslaughter. This court is restricted to issues raised in the defendant’s present
proceedings.
Conclusion.
The Heemstra I court concluded that legal error required
reversal and remanded for a new trial.
Nothing in that decision barred
Heemstra’s retrial on first-degree murder based on the theory of premeditation.
Heemstra does not challenge his current conviction of voluntary manslaughter on
any other ground. We affirm.
AFFIRMED.
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