Duane Luverne Yates v. State of Iowa ( 2023 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 22-0159
Filed July 13, 2023
DUANE LUVERNE YATES,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, Roger L. Sailer,
Judge.
Applicant appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief on
the ground of untimeliness. AFFIRMED.
Michael J. Jacobsma of Jacobsma Law Firm, P.C., Orange City, for
appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Heard by Ahlers, P.J., Badding, J., and Carr, S.J.* Tabor, J., takes no part.
*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206
(2023).
2
CARR, Senior Judge.
Duane Yates appeals the district court’s ruling that his current application
for postconviction relief (PCR) is untimely. Yates claims a new three-year time
period for filing PCR actions began when he was resentenced. We determine the
three-year statute of limitations in Iowa Code section 822.3 (2004) did not begin
anew when Yates was resentenced in 2015. We affirm the decision of the district
court.
I. Background Facts & Proceedings
In 2002, Yates was convicted of second-degree sexual abuse. His
conviction was affirmed on appeal. State v. Yates, No. 02-1681, 2003
WL 22697964, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. Nov. 17, 2003). Procedendo issued on
February 13, 2004.1
Yates filed a PCR action claiming he had been given an illegal sentence
which imposed the enhancement under section 901A.2(3). State v. Yates,
No. 12-2273, 2014 WL 2600212, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. June 11, 2014). The district
court agreed and removed the sentencing enhancement. Id. On appeal we ruled,
“We affirm the November 27, 2012 order correcting Yates’s sentence. We . . .
1 Yates has filed multiple applications for PCR through the years. In Yates v. State,
No. 03-1268, 2005 WL 425458, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 24, 2005), Yates
appealed the denial of his request for a restitution hearing. In Yates v. State,
No. 08-1879, 2009 WL 3064427, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Sept. 17, 2009), Yates
appealed the dismissal of his PCR action under Iowa Rule of Civil Procedure
1.944. In Yates v. State, No. 13-1284, 2014 WL 5861986, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App.
Nov. 13, 2014), Yates appealed, claiming he should not be subjected to the sex-
offender registry requirements but the PCR action was determined to be untimely.
In Yates v. State, No. 16-1328, 2018 WL 3650279, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App.
Aug. 1, 2018), Yates appealed the district court’s denial of his request to reopen
his first PCR action; the action was denied based on untimeliness and claim
preclusion.
3
remand for a hearing on the addition of the applicable section 901A.2(8)[2] provision
to Yates’s sentence, with directions to grant Yates’s request to be present at that
hearing.” Id. at *3.
On remand, the district court determined it would not apply section
901A.2(8) and declined to hold a hearing on the matter. State v. Yates, No. 14-
1774, 2015 WL 4936273, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 19, 2015). We affirmed the
district court’s ruling on appeal, finding, “The district court determined it would not
impose the additional term of parole, and the decision inured to Yates’s benefit. A
hearing at which the defendant was present was not required under these
circumstances.”3 Id.Yates filed a PCR application in 2014, claiming he received ineffective
assistance of counsel in an earlier PCR action. In discussing whether the 2014
application was outside the three-year deadline in section 822.3,4 we stated, “We
also are unpersuaded that a resentencing decision in Yates’s case restarted the
clock. Section 822.3 begins the clock at the time of conviction, not sentence.
2 Section 901A.2(8) provides an enhanced sentencing provision for individuals that
have previous convictions for sexually violent offenses that “[i]n addition to any
other sentence imposed” “the person shall be sentenced to an additional term of
parole or work release not to exceed two years.”
3 Yates filed an application for further review of this decision on September 8, 2015,
the application was denied on October 12, 2015, and procedendo issued on the
same date.
4 The pertinent provisions of section 822.3 provide:
[All] applications [for PCR] must be filed within three years from the
date the conviction or decision is final or, in the event of an appeal,
from the date the writ of procedendo is issued. However, this
limitation does not apply to a ground of fact or law that could not have
been raised within the applicable time period.
4
Procedendo on Yates’s direct appeal from his conviction was filed in 2004.”5 Yates
v. State, No. 16-0349, 2016 WL 7393896, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 21, 2016).
Yates filed the present PCR action on January 23, 2018, alleging he
received ineffective assistance from defense counsel during the original criminal
proceedings. The State filed a motion for summary disposition on the ground that
the PCR action was time barred under section 822.3. In a resistance to the motion,
Yates claimed his sentence became final on October 12, 2015, when his
application for further review was denied and procedendo issued in Yates, 2015
WL 4936273, at *1, the appeal of his resentencing. He asserted that his 2018 PCR
action was timely because it was filed within three years of October 12, 2015. The
State’s response pointed out that this argument was rejected in Yates, 2016 WL
7393896, at *2, where the court ruled, “Section 822.3 begins the clock at the time
of conviction, not sentence.”
The district court ruled:
The State in turn argues that the doctrine expressed in Yates,
2016 WL 7393896, [at *2], is controlling. In that prior case, Yates
also argued that his postconviction relief case was not time barred
due to a resentencing providing new life to the postconviction claim.
However, there the appellate court specifically rejected that
argument holding: “We also are unpersuaded that a resentencing
decision in Yates’s case restarted the clock. Section 822.3 begins
the clock at the time of conviction, not sentence. Procedendo on
Yates’s direct appeal from his conviction was filed in 2004.” This
5 Yates filed an application for further review of the decision of the Iowa Court of
Appeals, which claimed:
In Yates’s case the time toll of the 3-year limit did not start to toll until
after the judgment of the new sentence was appealed and the
procedendo issued . . . . Since the resentencing was held in 2014,
any action thereafter is timely filed under Iowa Code [section] 822.3
on the 3-year time limit to bring an action . . . .
The Iowa Supreme Court denied the application for further review. Procedendo
issued on February 14, 2017.
5
holding makes clear that [section] 822.3 began to run in 2004 when
the direct appeal from Yates’s original case was concluded.
Resentencing in October 2015 does not reset this clock, and as such,
the limitation period for postconviction relief has run. As Yates’s
petition was filed past the three-year limitation on postconviction
petitions, Yates must fit within an exception to the [section] 822.3
limitation.
(Citations omitted). The trial court granted the State’s motion for summary
disposition.6 Yates now appeals.
II. Standard of Review
We review a district court’s decision in a PCR proceeding for the correction
of errors of law. Sothman v. State, 967 N.W.2d 512, 522 (Iowa 2021). “Summary
[disposition] is appropriate if the record ‘show[s] that there is no genuine issue as
to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter
of law.’” Linn v. State, 929 N.W.2d 717, 730 (Iowa 2019) (quoting Iowa R. Civ. P.
1.981(3)). The State, as the party filing for summary disposition, has the burden
to show there are no genuine issues of material fact and it is entitled to judgment
as a matter of law. Id.III. Discussion
Yates claims the three-year statute of limitations in section 822.3 did not
begin running until he exhausted his direct appeal on his resentencing. He points
out that section 822.3 provides PCR applications “must be filed within three years
from the date the conviction or decision is final or, in the event of an appeal, from
the date the writ of procedendo is issued.” He states the decision in his criminal
6The court also denied Yates relief based on claims raised in relation to Allison v.
State, 914 N.W.2d 866 (Iowa 2018). Yates has not raised his claims under Allison
on appeal.
6
action was not final until he was resentenced in 2012, and he could file a timely
PCR application within three years after procedendo was issued from his appeal
of the resentencing, which was October 12, 2015. Yates argues that the present
PCR action, filed on January 23, 2018, was filed within three years after the date
of procedendo in October 2015 and thus was timely.
This issue was addressed in a previous PCR action filed by Yates. We
stated, “We also are unpersuaded that a resentencing decision in Yates’s case
restarted the clock. Section 822.3 begins the clock at the time of conviction, not
sentence. Procedendo on Yates’s direct appeal from his conviction was filed in
2004.” Yates, 2016 WL 7393896, at *2.
The State advances that our previous decision about the legal
consequences of the resentencing is binding now based on the law of the case
doctrine. See State v. Ragland, 812 N.W.2d 654, 658 (Iowa 2012).
The law of the case doctrine “represents the practice of courts
to refuse to reconsider what has once been decided.” It stems from
“a public policy against reopening matters which have already been
decided.” Under the law of the case doctrine, “the legal principles
announced and the views expressed by a reviewing court in an
opinion, right or wrong, are binding throughout further progress of the
case upon the litigants, the trial court and this court in later appeals.”
Therefore, under the doctrine, “‘an appellate decision becomes the
law of the case and is controlling on both the trial court and on any
further appeals in the same case.’”
Id. (citations omitted). The principles of finality and judicial economy that underpin
the law of the case doctrine are alluring in the present context. We prefer,
however, to rest out decision not on the law of the case, but on the proposition that
our 2016 holding that his three-year clock began to run in 2004 was correct when
7
decided and has been plainly reinforced by the later opinion of our supreme court,
which we discuss next below.
Sahinovic v. State, 940 N.W.2d 357, 359 (Iowa 2020), suggests that the
reasoning in Yates, 2016 WL 7393896, at *2 was correct. Sahinovic addressed
the issue of “whether a defendant who wishes to challenge his or her underlying
conviction gets the benefit of a new three-year, postconviction-relief deadline when
that defendant is resentenced.” 940 N.W.2d at 357. The court found, “Here the
conviction became final in 2011, and that finality was never disturbed simply
because Sahinovic filed a motion to correct an illegal sentence in 2014, and in
response thereto, the district court amended his sentence in 2015.” Id. at 361.
The court concluded Sahinovic did not receive a new three-year period to file a
PCR application, stating “[i]f the conviction itself remained final, then section
822.3’s time clock does not restart as to challenges to that conviction.” Id. at 357.
The holding in Sahinovic has been recognized and applied in subsequent
cases by our court. See Reed v. State, No. 21-1311, 2022 WL 16985691, at *1
(Iowa Ct. App. Nov. 17, 2022) (“[T]he date a conviction becomes final under
section 822.3 relates to the original proceeding and not to the date of a
resentencing order.”); Sanders v. State, No. 20-1050, 2022 WL 951037, at *2 (Iowa
Ct. App. Mar. 30, 2022) (“Our supreme court has already rejected the argument
that the PCR statute of limitations begins to run anew following a proceeding for
correction of an illegal sentence.”); Davis v. State, No. 20-0551, 2021 WL 5918404,
at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 15, 2021) (finding a PCR application filed after
resentencing was untimely); Munoz-Gonzales v. State, No. 20-0801, 2021
8
WL 1907146, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. May 12, 2021) (finding that resentencing did not
bring about a new limitations period).
Yates claims he comes within an exception found in Sahinovic:
To be clear, it would be a different situation if a resentencing
had been ordered as part of a direct appeal. In that event, we believe
both the conviction and the sentence do not become final for Iowa
Code section 822.3 purposes until the defendant is resentenced.
However, where the defendant files either an application for
postconviction relief resulting only in a resentencing or a motion to
correct an illegal sentence resulting in a resentencing, the conviction
has never ceased to be final and the section 822.3 clock does not
restart.
940 N.W.2d 357 at 361 n.3.
We determine this footnote does not change Yates’s situation. Yates was
not resentenced following a direct appeal. His conviction was affirmed following
his direct appeal. Yates, 2003 WL 22697964, at *4. Procedendo issued on
February 13, 2004. Yates claimed the imposition of a sentencing enhancement
was illegal in his PCR application filed on May 16, 2013. See Yates, 2014
WL 2600212, at *1. The resentencing was due to this 2013 PCR application. We
conclude “the conviction has never ceased to be final and the section 822.3 clock
does not restart.” See Sahinovic, 940 N.W.2d 357 at 361 n.3.
We affirm the district court decision denying Yates’s PCR application on the
ground it was untimely under section 822.3.
AFFIRMED.