State of Iowa v. Cordero Robert Seals ( 2015 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 14-1183
Filed September 10, 2015
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
CORDERO ROBERT SEALS,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Johnson County, Deborah Farmer
Minot, District Associate Judge.
A criminal defendant contends his tampering-with-records charge should
have been dismissed because of a speedy-indictment violation. AFFIRMED.
Alison Werner Smith of Hayek, Brown, Moreland & Smith, L.L.P., Iowa
City, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Tyler J. Buller and Jean C. Pettinger,
Assistant Attorneys General, Louis S. Sloven, Student Legal Intern, Janet M.
Lyness, County Attorney, and Elizabeth Beglin, Assistant County Attorney, for
appellee.
Considered by Tabor, P.J., Bower, J., and Miller, S.J.*
*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206 (2015).
2
TABOR, P.J.
To avoid facing an outstanding warrant for his arrest in Linn County,
Cordero Robert Seals misidentified himself to law enforcement as his brother.
Unfortunately for Seals, his brother had pending arrest warrants in Johnson
County. Booked on his brother’s warrants, Seals spent the night in the Johnson
County jail. After Seals admitted the deception, the Johnson County Sheriff
transferred him back to Linn County custody, and then filed a complaint charging
Seals with tampering with public records, in violation of Iowa Code section
715A.5 (2013).
Seals contends the district court should have dismissed the tampering
charge based on a speedy indictment violation because the State filed its trial
information more than forty-five days after his arrest. See Iowa Rule Crim. P.
2.33(2)(a). Because neither holding Seals on his Linn County warrant nor filing
the new complaint constituted an arrest, we affirm the district court’s denial of his
motion to dismiss.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings
On September 10, 2013, Cordero Robert Seals identified himself to Cedar
Rapids police as Cortez Andrew Seals—the name of his brother. The police
arrested Seals for two outstanding warrants in Johnson County under that name
and transferred him to the custody of the Johnson County Sheriff. In Johnson
County, Seals completed all the booking paperwork, including signing his name
as Cortez Andrew Seals.
3
The next morning, Deputies Tyler Schneider, Jeff Gingerich, and John
Good were on duty at the Johnson County jail. At around 9:00 a.m. Deputy
Schneider noticed the inmate did not look like Cortez Seals, with whom the
deputy had prior dealings. The inmate did not have tattoos or other features
matching the photographs of Cortez in the law enforcement database. The
deputies confronted Seals with this information, and he admitted using his
brother’s name to avoid serving his own jail sentence in Linn County for a driving
offense.
At 9:32 a.m. the deputies contacted Linn County to verify the warrant
information. Linn County authorities responded five minutes later confirming they
had an outstanding arrest warrant for Seals on a driving while barred offense.
They requested Johnson County hold Seals until they could pick him up. The
Johnson County deputies transferred Seals to Linn County custody at 10:50 a.m.
At 1:41 p.m. Deputy Schneider filed a complaint against Seals, alleging he
tampered with public records by providing his brother’s biographical information
during the booking process, as well as signing the paperwork under his brother’s
name. Also on September 11, 2013, a district associate judge signed an arrest
warrant based on the complaint. Johnson County deputies arrested Seals on
September 26. Seals entered an initial appearance on September 27. The State
filed its trial information on November 8, 2013.
On November 20, Seals filed a motion to dismiss claiming he was arrested
on September 11 and the trial information was not filed until fifty-eight days
later—thirteen days beyond the deadline set in rule 2.33(2)(a). The State argued
4
no speedy indictment violation occurred because Seals was not arrested until
September 26, forty-three days before the filing of the trial information. The
district court denied Seals’s motion to dismiss.
Seals waived his right to a jury trial and the court found him guilty on a
stipulated record. Seals now appeals.
II. Standard of Review
We review the district court’s interpretation of the speedy indictment rule
to correct legal error. State v. Penn-Kennedy, 862 N.W.2d 384, 386 (Iowa 2015).
If the district court’s findings of fact are supported by substantial evidence, we
are bound by them. State v. Wing, 791 N.W.2d 243, 246 (Iowa 2010).
III. Speedy Indictment Analysis
Both the federal and state constitutions guarantee the right to a speedy
trial. See U.S. Const. amend. XI; Iowa Const art. I, § 10. Our rules of criminal
procedure embody this right, providing specific deadlines to protect citizens from
undue delays in being charged and tried for public offenses. State v. Miller, 818
N.W.2d 267, 271 (Iowa Ct. App. 2012).
Rule 2.33 dictates the time frame within which the State must bring an
indictment or file its trial information against an individual arrested for committing
a public offense:
When an adult is arrested for the commission of a public
offense . . . and an indictment is not found against the defendant
within 45 days, the court must order the prosecution to be
dismissed, unless good cause to the contrary is shown or the
defendant waives the defendant's right thereto.
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Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.33(2)(a); see also Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.5(5) (“The term
‘indictment’ embraces the trial information, and all provisions of law applying to
prosecutions on indictments apply also to informations . . . .”). For purposes of
speedy indictment under rule 2.33(2)(a), a citation issued in lieu of arrest is
deemed an arrest. Iowa Code § 805.1(4).
The rule mandating a speedy indictment aims to relieve an accused of the
anxiety associated with the suspension of a prosecution, to provide for the
reasonably prompt administration of justice, to prevent the loss of evidence, and
to maintain a fair process. Penn-Kennedy, 862 N.W.2d at 387. The speedy
indictment clock starts not with the commencement of the prosecution, but with
the arrest. Id. (“An arrest is the triggering event to commence the forty-five-day
time period to file an indictment under the rule, supplanting the previous version
of the rule’s use of the date of prosecution as the trigger.”); see also Wing, 791
N.W.2d at 255 (Cady, J. dissenting).
On appeal, Seals advances two arguments in support of his speedy
indictment claim. First, relying on Wing, 791 N.W.2d at 247, Seals argues he
was arrested for the purposes of rule 2.33 on the morning of September 11 when
“he was kept in custody after deputies learned he was not Cortez Seals . . .
before the deputies learned there was a warrant out for [his] arrest in Linn
County.” Second, he claims he was constructively arrested on September 11
6
when the Johnson County deputy filed a written complaint alleging the
tampering-with-records violation. We will address each claim in turn.1
A. Wing’s Reasonable Person Standard
Arrests are governed by Iowa Code chapter 804. The manner of arrest is
outlined in section 804.14. But our supreme court has held a seizure by a peace
officer may constitute an arrest for speedy indictment purposes even if the officer
does not take the formal steps outlined in section 804.14 “as long as the person
making the arrest sufficiently conveys, either through words or conduct, the intent
to perform an arrest.” See Wing, 791 N.W.2d at 247–48. Courts must determine
on a case-by-case basis whether a seizure constitutes an arrest, considering
whether the suspect is informed of his arrest, is handcuffed or booked, submits to
authority, or believes he is free to leave. See id. at 248. Wing eschewed a
bright-line test, stating no one factor was determinative. Id. The majority in Wing
concluded:
When an arresting officer does not follow the protocol for
arrest outlined in section 804.14 and does not provide any explicit
statements indicating that he or she is or is not attempting to effect
an arrest, we think the soundest approach is to determine whether
a reasonable person in the defendant’s position would have
believed an arrest occurred, including whether the arresting officer
manifested a purpose to arrest.
Id. at 249.
Seals contends he was arrested on the tampering-with-records offense
when Johnson County deputies kept him in custody on the morning of
1
Our analysis relies on the Iowa Supreme Court’s recent revisit to the scope and
application of the speedy indictment rule in State v. Penn-Kennedy, 862 N.W.2d 384,
387-90 (Iowa 2015). Neither the district court nor the parties had the benefit of that
opinion when considering the facts here.
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September 11, even after learning he was not his brother Cortez, whose
warrants had prompted the original booking into jail. Seals argues a reasonable
person in his position “would have believed that the continued police restraint on
his freedom amounted to an arrest for the crime for which he was questioned by
deputies Schneider and Good: tampering with records.” See Wing, 791 N.W.2d
at 252–53.
To assess that argument, we look to the content of the deputies’
questioning. When Deputies Gingerich and Schneider confronted Seals about
his true identity on the morning of September 11, Seals admitted using his
brother’s name to avoid serving his own jail sentence in Linn County. That
admission prompted the Johnson County deputies to contact Linn County
authorities concerning the outstanding arrest warrant; Linn County authorities
confirmed having a mittimus for Seals and asked Johnson County to hold him.
Seals was back in Linn County custody before 11:00 a.m.
After admitting he had a pending jail sentence in Linn County, and seeing
the quick efforts by the Johnson County deputies to transfer him back to Linn
County custody, a reasonable person in Seals position would have believed his
continued detention in Johnson County was on that pending Linn County
warrant. See Wing, 791 N.W.2d at 252 (finding reasonable person in Wing’s
position would have believed an arrest occurred when they admitted possession
of contraband). The record does not reveal that the Johnson County deputies
told Seals they anticipated filing the tampering charge, and they did not file a
complaint on that offense until the afternoon of September 11.
8
When we consider the totality of Seals’s interactions with the Johnson
County deputies, we conclude his detention after they learned his true identity
was based on his admission to having a Linn County warrant and did not
constitute a new arrest triggering the speedy indictment clock. See State v.
Miller, 818 N.W.2d 267, 277 (Iowa Ct. App. 2012) (noting “our existing speedy-
indictment precedents do not require law enforcement to make an arrest based
on every crime for which they possess probable cause”). Any anxiety Seals may
have experienced waiting to be indicted on the tampering charge in Johnson
County was implicated by the power of the prosecution to bring a separate
indictment on a different criminal offense any time within the statute-of-limitations
period. See Penn-Kennedy, 862 N.W.2d at 389–90 (limiting reasonable-person
rule in Wing to cases where arrest is not promptly followed by any prosecution).
B. Constructive Arrest
In the alternative, Seals argues he was constructively arrested when
Deputy Schneider filed a sworn complaint at 1:41 p.m. on September 11. Seals
argues the complaint was the equivalent of a citation in lieu of arrest.2 “The
issuance of a citation in lieu of arrest shall be deemed an arrest for the purpose
2
In support of this proposition, Seals cites State v. Garcia, No. 10-1647, 2011 WL
3925731, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. 2011), in which we concluded the filing of a “citation and
complaint” form, even without Garcia’s signature or a time and place for his appearance,
triggered the speedy indictment rule. To the extent our unpublished decision offered
persuasive authority, we recognize it has been invalidated by the following clarification in
Penn-Kennedy, 862 N.W.2d at 387: “[A] criminal prosecution is commenced upon the
filing of the first charging instrument, including the filing of a ‘complaint.’ Iowa Code
§ 804.1. . . . The speedy indictment time period, however, does not begin with the
commencement of the prosecution but with an arrest.”
9
of the speedy indictment requirements of rule of criminal procedure 2.33(2)(a),
Iowa court rules.” Iowa Code § 805.1(4).
The State counters that the concept of constructive arrest does not apply
to these facts because the deputies did not issue Seals a citation for tampering
with records. We agree the complaint filed on September 11 did not constitute a
citation in lieu of arrest so as to trigger the speedy indictment clock.
Chapter 805 governs citations in lieu of arrest. “[A] peace officer having
grounds to make an arrest may issue a citation in lieu of making an arrest without
a warrant or, if a warrantless arrest has been made, a citation may be issued in
lieu of continued custody.” Iowa Code § 805.1(1). A citation must include the
following information: “the name and address of the person, the nature of the
offense, the time and place at which the person is to appear in court, and the
penalty for nonappearance.” Iowa Code § 805.2. Before the peace officer
releases the cited person, that person “shall sign the citation” and his or her
signature shall “serve as a written promise to appear in court at the time and
place specified.” Iowa Code § 805.3. The peace officer is required to give a
copy of the citation to the person. Id. Section 805.4 makes clear that a
“complaint” serves a separate purpose from the citation in lieu of arrest: “The law
enforcement officer issuing the citation shall cause to be filed a complaint in the
court in which the cited person is required to appear, as soon as practicable,
charging the crime stated in said notice.” Iowa Code § 805.4 (cross referencing
section 804.1 which describes commencing a criminal prosecution by filing a
complaint before a magistrate).
10
The complaint filed by Deputy Schneider was not a citation in lieu of
arrest. As the district court noted, spaces at the bottom of the complaint form
where a peace officer would designate a time and place for the defendant to
appear in court were not filled out. The space for the defendant’s signature was
also left blank. Accordingly, the complaint did not include a promise for Seals to
appear and did not fulfill the requirements for a citation in sections 805.2 and
805.3. In addition, the form was not signed by a judicial magistrate.3
Our record does not establish that the complaint was served on Seals.
Even if we assume it was sent to him, because it was not a citation issued by a
peace officer commanding defendant’s later appearance, it did not constitute a
citation in lieu of arrest under section 805.1(4).
Neither did the court’s issuance of an arrest warrant on September 11
constitute an arrest. When the warrant issued on the Johnson County tampering
charge, Seals was in the custody of Linn County authorities. “A person not in the
custody of county authorities is not arrested by the mere bringing of a charge in
that county.” See State v. Waters, 515 N.W.2d 562, 566 (Iowa Ct. App. 1994)
(citing State v. Beeks, 428 N.W.2d 307, 309 (Iowa Ct. App. 1988), which relied
on State v. Boelman, 330 N.W.2d 794, 795 (Iowa 1983)). “A person must be in
the custody of county authorities of the county issuing the arrest warrant for a
person to be under ‘arrest’ in that county.” Id.
3
Even if the form had been signed by a magistrate, our supreme court has declined to
extend the constructive arrest doctrine in section 805.1(4) to situations where the
magistrate issued a citation under section 804.1. See State v. Mahan, 483 N.W.2d 1, 2
(Iowa 1992).
11
Seals contends on appeal that Waters and Boelman should be overruled
because the distinction between being in custody in different counties is less
significant today due to the ease of electronic filings. We are not convinced that
electronic filing has any bearing on the question of when an arrest occurs in the
county in which criminal charges have been filed. But more critically, because
Boelman was decided by our supreme court, we are not at liberty to overrule it.
See State v. Miller, 841 N.W.2d 583, 584 n.1 (Iowa 2014) (“Generally, it is the
role of the supreme court to decide if case precedent should no longer be
followed.”).
Seals was arrested on September 26 when Johnson County authorities
took him into custody on the September 11 warrant. Accordingly, the district
court correctly denied his motion to dismiss claiming a speedy indictment
violation. Because the State filed its trial information within the required forty-five
day window, we affirm the conviction.
AFFIRMED.