Revette Ann Sauser v. State of Iowa , 928 N.W.2d 816 ( 2019 )

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 17–0807
Filed May 31, 2019
REVETTE SAUSER,
Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Appellee.
On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Delaware County,
Thomas A. Bitter, Judge.
Applicant for postconviction relief appeals a district court decision
denying her claim for ineffective assistance of counsel. DECISION OF
COURT APPEALS VACATED; DISTRICT COURT JUDGMENT
REVERSED AND REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS.
Webb L. Wassmer of Wassmer Law Office, P.L.C., Marion, for
appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Tyler J. Buller and Susan
Krisko, Assistant Attorneys General, and John W. Bernau, County
Attorney, for appellee.
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CADY, Chief Justice.
In this appeal from a ruling by the district court that denied an
application for postconviction relief, we consider whether a factual basis
existed for the element of confinement to support a plea of guilty to the
crime of kidnapping in the second degree. The court of appeals affirmed
the decision of the district court. On further review, we vacate the
decision of the court of appeals, reverse the decision of the district court,
and remand the case for further proceedings. We conclude a factual
basis to support the confinement element of the crime of kidnapping is
not established by evidence that the defendant impeded the victim’s
movement by pointing a handgun at the victim for a period of time before
shooting and killing him.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings.
Revette Ann Sauser and Terry Sauser were married for twelve
years. Their marriage was plagued for years by discord and strife. On
April 3, 2011, Revette shot Terry with a handgun. The incident occurred
as Terry was sitting in a chair in the living room of their home. He was
intoxicated, and a verbal altercation ensued. Revette retrieved a
handgun located in the house and concealed it on her person. She then
pulled the gun out and pointed it at Terry for a period of time before the
verbal altercation abruptly ended when the gun was fired. Revette then
called emergency responders to report that she shot Terry. Terry died
shortly after law enforcement officers arrived at the home.
Sauser was charged by trial information with murder in the first
degree in violation of Iowa Code section 707.2 (2011). A plea bargain was
reached between the State and Sauser shortly before trial was to begin.
Pursuant to the plea bargain, the State amended and substituted the
trial information to charge Sauser with kidnapping in the second degree
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in violation of section 710.3, voluntary manslaughter in violation of
section 707.4, and going armed with intent in violation of section 708.8.
Sauser then entered a plea of guilty to the three charges on
February 1, 2012. She also waived her right to file a motion in arrest of
judgment, and the case proceeded to immediate sentencing. The district
court sentenced Sauser to twenty-five years of incarceration for the
kidnapping conviction, ten years’ incarceration for the voluntary
manslaughter conviction, and five years for a going-armed-with-intent
conviction. The court ordered the sentences be served consecutively.
Sauser subsequently filed an application for postconviction relief.
Among other claims, she asserted her trial counsel was ineffective for
permitting her to plead guilty to the kidnapping charge because no facts
were presented to show that she committed the essential element of
confinement.
After years of legal maneuvering, a hearing was held on the
postconviction relief claim. Her original trial counsel testified he believed
the confinement element was established because Sauser told him she
pointed the gun at the victim “for some time” before discharging it. The
plea colloquy was also made a part of the postconviction relief record.
During the plea colloquy, Sauser acknowledged she took the gun into the
living room knowing she was “going to confine Terry,” and she used the
gun “to keep [Terry] confined in that space.”
The district court found Sauser was not denied effective assistance
of counsel. It denied her application for postconviction relief. It found a
factual basis for confinement existed to support the plea of guilty and
further found Sauser failed to establish relief under her other claims.
Sauser appealed from the district court ruling. Her sole claim of
error relates to the lack of a factual basis to support the element of
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confinement. As a part of this claim, she argued the district court
should have informed her of the legal definition of confinement during
the plea colloquy.
We transferred the case to the court of appeals. It affirmed the
decision of the district court. It held that Saucer’s trial counsel did not
provide ineffective assistance because a factual basis did exist for the
plea and she was not entitled to be informed about the law governing the
meaning of confinement. Sauser sought, and we granted, further review.
II. Standard of Review.
We generally review the denial of an application for postconviction
relief for correction of errors at law. Goosman v. State, 764 N.W.2d 539,
541 (Iowa 2009).
III. Analysis.
In order to prevail on an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim, a
defendant must demonstrate both that “(1) . . . trial counsel failed to
perform an essential duty, and (2) this failure resulted in prejudice.”
State v. Straw, 709 N.W.2d 128, 133 (Iowa 2006); see also Strickland v.
Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687–88, 104 S. Ct. 2052, 2065 (1984).
Defense counsel violates an essential duty under the first prong by
allowing a defendant to plead guilty to a charge that lacks a factual
basis. State v. Philo, 697 N.W.2d 481, 485 (Iowa 2005); see also State v.
Doggett, 687 N.W.2d 97, 101–02 (Iowa 2004). Under the second prong, a
defendant is required to show the results of the proceeding would have
been different but for counsel’s error. Philo, 697 N.W.2d at 485.
Because Sauser’s kidnapping sentence relied entirely on her guilty plea,
prejudice would be established if counsel was ineffective.
Accordingly, Sauser must establish that the record is devoid of a
factual basis supporting the kidnapping conviction. See State v. Ortiz,
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789 N.W.2d 761, 765 (Iowa 2010) (explaining the defendant must
demonstrate the record is lacking a factual basis to support a first-degree
burglary charge in order to prevail on the essential-duty prong of
ineffective assistance of counsel). An essential element of kidnapping
requires a person to confine or remove another from one place to another
without authority. Iowa Code § 710.1. Thus, the narrow issue we face is
whether the record contains a factual basis to demonstrate Sauser
confined the victim in a manner to support an independent kidnapping
charge.
A factual basis must be found within the record, and the record as
a whole must contain facts to satisfy each element of the offense. Ortiz,
789 N.W.2d at 767–68. A factual basis may be determined from four
sources: “(1) the prosecutor’s statements, (2) the defendant’s statements,
(3) the minutes of testimony, and (4) the presentence report.” Rhoades v.
State, 848 N.W.2d 22, 29 (Iowa 2014).
The State argues a factual basis for the confinement element of the
crime was established by testimony presented at the postconviction relief
hearing by Sauser’s trial counsel, the minutes of testimony, and Sauser’s
statements made during the plea colloquy. In response, Sauser initially
claims her statements at the plea colloquy cannot be used to help
establish a factual basis because the district court failed to explain the
meaning of the word “confinement” to her as a part of the colloquy.
We find it unnecessary to address the claim that the district court
was required to inform Sauser of the meaning or definition of
confinement. Her claim on appeal is not that her plea was not voluntary,
but whether a factual basis exists. State v. Finney, 834 N.W.2d 46, 61–
62 (Iowa 2013) (distinguishing a voluntariness claim from a claim based
on a lack of factual basis).
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We recently reviewed our law governing the quantity and quality of
evidence needed to support a kidnapping conviction associated with the
conviction of another crime in State v. Robinson, 859 N.W.2d 464, 467–
78 (Iowa 2015). Overall, for the crime of kidnapping to be punished as a
separate offense, the confinement (or removal) must be beyond that
which would ordinarily be associated with the other underlying offense.
Id. at 477. In other words, it must be more than “an inherent incident of
[the] commission of the [other] crime.” State v. Rich, 305 N.W.2d 739,
745 (Iowa 1981). This requirement generally means such confinement
must have an independent role from the other crime, so that it
“substantially increases the risk of harm to the victim, significantly
lessens the risk of detection, or significantly facilitates escape following
the consummation of the offense.” Robinson, 859 N.W.2d at 478 (quoting
Rich, 305 N.W.2d at 745). Importantly, we also recalled the underlying
rationale for permitting an independent conviction for kidnapping was
that it made the underlying crime more heinous. Id. at 476; see also
State v. Marr, 316 N.W.2d 176, 180 (Iowa 1982). The idea is that the
kidnapping must make the defendant’s overall actions substantially more
dangerous.
The State identifies three reasons to support its claim that
kidnapping occurred in this case when Sauser pointed the handgun at
the victim prior to shooting him. First, it asserts this act of confinement
by Sauser increased the risk of harm to the victim because it made him
an easier target when she discharged the weapon. Second, it asserts the
confinement lessened the risk of detection because it prevented the
victim from fleeing the house before the shooting occurred. Third, this
confinement would have made escape by Sauser easier if she had chosen
to escape instead of calling law enforcement.
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The evidence of confinement from the testimony at the
postconviction relief hearing and the plea colloquy provides little support
for the notion that it rendered the crime more heinous. The analysis we
follow is not theoretical but factual. The facts culled from the hearing
and the plea colloquy do not reveal the amount of time the victim was
held at gunpoint, and the reasons offered by the State that transformed
the case into a kidnapping was merely speculative. Additionally, the
minutes of testimony do little to transform the incident into a
kidnapping, although they could suggest that thirty minutes or so
elapsed between the time the gun was first pointed at the victim and the
time it was discharged.
Furthermore, the evidence of confinement in this case does not
align with the evidence of confinement identified in our prior cases to
support an independent conviction of kidnapping since we first
addressed this issue in Rich. See Rich, 305 N.W.2d at 742; see also State
v. Griffin, 564 N.W.2d 370, 373 (Iowa 1997) (finding kidnapping when
defendant’s confinement of the victim was longer than necessary to
commit the underlying sexual assault); State v. Misner, 410 N.W.2d 216,
223–24 (Iowa 1987) (concluding substantial evidence supported the
jury’s finding that hostage-taking was kidnapping); State v. Newman, 326
N.W.2d 796, 801–02 (Iowa 1982) (finding an independent kidnapping
charge when defendant pulled the victim into a car, drove away, and
sexually assaulted her); State v. Knupp, 310 N.W.2d 179, 183 (Iowa
1981) (holding that luring a victim into a vehicle and forcing her to
commit sex acts constituted kidnapping). Each of those cases relied on a
series of acts of confinement that made the underlying crime more
abominable. Instead, the circumstances in this case align more with
State v. Mead, 318 N.W.2d 440, 445 (Iowa 1982), in which we found
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insufficient evidence of kidnapping involving the underlying crimes of
burglary and assault. In Mead, the defendant entered a woman’s home
and confined her for a short period of time by holding a knife to her
throat. Id. at 441–42. We said, “[K]idnapping cannot be predicated on
merely ‘seizing’ another person.” Id. at 445. It is a heinous crime to
assault a person by holding a knife at their throat, but the confinement it
created does not render the assault more heinous.
Overall, the facts in this case were more associated with a shooting
than a kidnapping prior to the shooting. Moreover, there was no
evidence Sauser confined the victim to purposely make it easier to strike
him with a bullet or to lessen the risk of being detected or to aid in an
escape. Instead, a fair review of all of the evidence revealed the
confinement was simply the unique facts associated with a particular
shooting and was related to the marital discord leading up to the
shooting. The shooting was not made substantially more heinous to
support a conviction for kidnapping.
IV. Conclusion.
We conclude there was insufficient evidence to trigger a conviction
for kidnapping in this case. We reverse the decision of the district court
and remand the case for further proceedings. If the State is unable to
establish a factual basis, the plea bargain is vacated and the prior charge
is reinstated.
DECISION OF COURT APPEALS VACATED; DISTRICT COURT
JUDGMENT REVERSED AND REMANDED FOR FURTHER
PROCEEDINGS.
All justices concur except McDonald, J., who takes no part.