Jeffrey Daniel Krone v. State of Iowa ( 2022 )


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  •                     IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
    No. 20-1433
    Filed January 12, 2022
    JEFFREY DANIEL KRONE,
    Applicant-Appellant,
    vs.
    STATE OF IOWA,
    Respondent-Appellee.
    ________________________________________________________________
    Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, Duane F.
    Hoffmeyer, Judge.
    An applicant challenges the denial of postconviction relief.   REVERSED
    AND REMANDED.
    Jamie Hunter of Dickey, Campbell & Sahag Law Firm, PLC, Des Moines,
    for appellant.
    Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Sheryl Soich, Assistant Attorney
    General, for appellee State.
    Considered by Tabor, P.J., and Greer and Badding, JJ.
    2
    TABOR, Presiding Judge.
    Jeffrey Krone appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief.
    His conviction followed submission of a written guilty plea to possession of
    methamphetamine. On appeal, he contends the district court erred by not reaching
    the merits of his claim that plea counsel was ineffective. According to Krone,
    effective counsel would have moved in arrest of judgment because the plea
    agreement was not disclosed on the record.
    The State now agrees the court wrongly decided Krone waived his
    ineffective-assistance claim.    But it insists the court “did briefly reject” the
    substance of that claim. In the alternative, the State argues Krone cannot show
    plea counsel’s performance prejudiced him.
    As both parties recognize, the district court should have reached the merits
    of Krone’s claim. Because we do not read the postconviction ruling as doing so,
    even briefly, we remand for that to happen. See McKnight v. State, 
    356 N.W.2d 532
    , 536 (Iowa 1984) (declining to resolve substantive issues presented in
    application because district court did not reach the merits).
    I.     Facts and Prior Proceedings
    In August 2017, a Sioux City police officer arrested Krone after finding a
    baggie containing .4 grams of methamphetamine on the floorboard of the Ford
    Explorer he was driving. The State charged Krone with possessing a controlled
    substance, in violation of Iowa Code section 124.401(5) (2017).
    Four months later, Krone’s attorney, Heidi Rouse, negotiated a plea deal.
    Krone told Rouse that he would accept a deferred judgment in exchange for his
    3
    guilty plea. According to Rouse, on either December 5 or December 8, Krone
    signed a written guilty plea and waiver-of-rights form.1
    On December 8, Rouse contacted the prosecutor asking for a deferred
    judgment on Krone’s behalf. Prosecutor Athena Ladeas responded that she would
    “check on it.”   But when Ladeas discovered that Krone received a deferred
    judgment in 2011, she refused Rouse’s request. At 8:55 a.m. on December 12,
    Ladeas sent this email: “He used one prior to this case so I’m not offering the
    second one. He can certainly argue for it.”
    At the postconviction hearing, attorney Rouse testified that she relayed the
    prosecutor’s position to her client. Her notes from that conversation showed that
    Krone agreed to submit the plea form and “request open sentencing.” In other
    words, Krone would plead guilty and could “argue to the court for what the outcome
    should be, including he could argue for a deferred judgment.” In his postconviction
    testimony, Krone denied consenting to a plea deal that did not involve the
    prosecution’s recommendation of a deferred judgment.           At 10:17 a.m. on
    December 12, Rouse filed the pre-signed waiver of rights and guilty plea. The
    court accepted the guilty plea that same day and set sentencing for January 2018.
    On the day of sentencing, Rouse and Ladeas had an informal meeting with
    Judge Todd Henlsey in chambers. Krone was not present. Prosecutor Ladeas
    originally had offered to recommend five days in jail, or ten days on electronic
    monitoring. But during the conversation, she agreed to reduce jail time to three
    days with seven days electronic monitoring. Judge Hensley told the attorneys he
    1Krone testified at the postconviction hearing that he did not sign the form. He
    asserted Rouse copied his signature from another document.
    4
    was not inclined to grant a deferred judgment. Rouse recalled that the judge was
    open to argument but, “unless we had something other than what was in the file,
    that Mr. Krone would be likely looking at more than the three days jail time.” Rouse
    then told her client that he could still request a deferred judgment, but she “did not
    believe going in and arguing for a deferred would result in him getting the deferred
    at that point and that [she] had gotten the new offer from the prosecutor.” So Krone
    left without attending the sentencing hearing.
    In a written ruling, the court imposed judgment and sentenced Krone to 180
    days in jail, all but three suspended and ten days of electronic monitoring. Krone
    filed a direct appeal from judgment and sentence.
    In February 2020, our court affirmed his conviction but remanded for
    resentencing because we could not tell whether the district court properly
    exercised its discretion. State v. Krone, No. 18-0139, 
    2020 WL 821935
    , at *5 (Iowa
    Ct. App. Feb. 19, 2020) (“The record is devoid of any details of a plea agreement.”).
    We cited State v. Thacker, in which our supreme court vacated a sentence
    because it was unclear if the district court was giving effect to the parties’ plea
    agreement or independently exercising its discretion. 
    862 N.W.2d 402
    , 410 (Iowa
    2015). Plus, we preserved Krone’s claims of ineffective assistance of plea counsel
    for a possible postconviction-relief action.
    Krone represented himself at the resentencing hearing in April 2020. The
    district court denied his request to withdraw his guilty plea.       Then the court
    sentenced Krone to two days in jail with credit for time served.
    Meanwhile, in September 2018, Krone applied for postconviction relief. The
    district court stayed the action until the direct appeal ended. Then in May 2020,
    5
    Krone amended his petition, alleging plea counsel was ineffective for not moving
    in arrest of judgment when the guilty plea failed to disclose the plea agreement.
    In November 2020, the district court denied relief. In doing so, the court
    rejected Krone’s claim that his attorney forged his signature. “The court finds and
    concludes Krone did sign a written plea of guilty as asserted by defense attorney
    Rouse.” Beyond that credibility finding, the court decided Krone could not pursue
    his claim of ineffective assistance of plea counsel in the postconviction case
    because he failed “to raise claims related to the validity of his guilty plea during his
    pro se representation” on direct appeal and at resentencing.
    Despite bypassing Krone’s attack on the legitimacy of his plea, the court
    was critical of plea counsel’s process of having Krone sign the plea form before
    securing an agreement from the prosecution:
    [T]he court would be less than remiss to say the signing of a written
    plea of guilty which references a plea agreement without an agreed
    upon plea agreement is not best practice. With an appropriate
    factual record, a court could conclude the signing of the written plea
    of guilty was not knowingly, voluntarily, or intelligently made. In this
    case, a disputed phone call is the sole affirmation a plea agreement
    (open sentence) existed.
    The court also questioned counsel’s advice to Krone that he did not need
    to appear at sentencing to argue for a deferred judgment.
    What transpired at the Law Enforcement Center without a court
    appearance under the circumstances creates concerns. Was a
    purported statement by District Associate Judge Hensley presented
    to [Krone] as conclusive when the judge made clear a hearing could
    be held if the defendant so desired? The signing of a written plea of
    guilty without a plea agreement as a matter of convenience is a bad
    practice.
    Krone now appeals, alleging the court erred in denying him relief without reaching
    the merits of his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim.
    6
    II.    Scope and Standards of Review
    We typically review postconviction-relief proceedings for correction of legal
    error. Ruiz v. State, 
    912 N.W.2d 435
    , 439 (Iowa 2018). But when the applicant
    alleges ineffective assistance of counsel, we switch to de novo review. 
    Id.
    III.   Analysis
    To prevail on his claim of ineffective assistance, Krone must prove attorney
    Rouse performed deficiently and prejudice resulted.             See Strickland v.
    Washington, 
    466 U.S. 668
    , 687 (1984). We measure counsel’s performance
    against the standard of a reasonably competent practitioner. State v. Clay, 
    824 N.W.2d 488
    , 495 (Iowa 2012). On the prejudice prong, because Krone pleaded
    guilty, he must show that but for Rouse’s omission he would have insisted on going
    to trial. See State v. Carroll, 
    767 N.W.2d 638
    , 644 (Iowa 2009).
    Starting with the performance prong, Krone points to two rules of criminal
    procedure requiring the plea-taking court to explore the influence of plea
    negotiations on the defendant’s decision to plead guilty. Iowa Rule of Criminal
    Procedure 2.8(2)(c) requires court “inquir[y] as to whether the defendant’s
    willingness to plead guilty results from prior discussions between the attorney for
    the state and the defendant or the defendant’s attorney.” Rule 2.10(2), in turn,
    “require[s] the disclosure of the [plea] agreement in open court at the time the plea
    is offered.” Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.10(2).
    Krone contends the document that his attorney submitted to the court—“an
    undated, written plea that contained multiple vague references to a plea agreement
    that may or may not exist”—did not comply with these rules. He argues Rouse
    was ineffective for failing to challenge that noncompliance by moving in arrest of
    7
    judgment. But the district court did not address that argument, opting instead to
    deny relief on waiver grounds.
    Out of the gate, the State concedes that the district court erred in deciding
    Krone waived his challenge to counsel’s handling of the guilty plea during direct
    appeal and at resentencing. The State acknowledges: “although Krone filed a pro
    se supplemental appellate brief, he was represented by counsel on direct appeal—
    contrary to the postconviction court’s observation—and the Court of Appeals
    specifically preserved his ineffective assistance claims for postconviction
    proceedings.” The State continues: “Moreover, as the resentencing court correctly
    recognized, its only task was to resentence [Krone] in light of the Court of Appeals
    decision finding a Thacker sentencing violation.”
    Yet the State contends the district court “ultimately ruled—albeit
    succinctly—on the substance of Krone’s claim when it accepted the credible
    testimony of defense counsel Heidi Rouse, which was in direct contradiction to
    Krone’s claims that he did not intend to plead guilty.”
    We read the court’s credibility determination more narrowly. True, the court
    rejected Krone’s assertion that his attorney forged his signature on the plea form.
    But it did not reach Krone’s underlying claim that Rouse was ineffective for not
    moving in arrest of judgment.
    Expecting that we might disagree, the State argues that “because there was
    no valid basis to arrest judgment, [Rouse] was not ineffective.” It adds, “even if the
    court concludes that the trial court should have inquired about any plea agreement
    in open court and counsel should have challenged that failure, Krone still cannot
    show resulting prejudice.” In reply, Krone points to his testimony that “had he
    8
    known that the State was not in agreement with a deferred judgment, he would
    have gone to trial.” He notes that even if he lost at trial, he still could have
    requested a deferred judgment at sentencing.
    While we appreciate the parties’ spirited arguments, we decline to reach the
    substance of Krone’s ineffective-assistance claim when the district court has not
    yet ruled on the merits. See McKnight, 
    356 N.W.2d at 536
    ; see also Hoosman v.
    State, No. 14-1870, 
    2016 WL 1704013
    , at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 27, 2016) (“We
    decline the State’s invitation to address the merits of Hoosman’s claims for the first
    time on appeal. The district court is in a better position to make the necessary
    credibility assessments, having heard the evidence first hand.”). Instead, we
    reverse the postconviction order and remand for a ruling on the merits from the
    record already created. We do not retain jurisdiction.
    REVERSED AND REMANDED.
    

Document Info

Docket Number: 20-1433

Filed Date: 1/12/2022

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 1/12/2022