State of Iowa v. Jon Thomas Kucharo ( 2023 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 23-0255
Filed December 20, 2023
STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,
vs.
JON THOMAS KUCHARO,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County, Meghan Corbin,
Judge.
A defendant appeals the denial of his motion to dismiss the trial information.
AFFIRMED.
Sonia M. Elossais of Carr Law Firm, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Zachary Miller, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee.
Considered by Greer, P.J., and Schumacher and Ahlers, JJ.
2
AHLERS, Judge.
Jon Kucharo was charged by trial information with multiple crimes. He
moved to dismiss the trial information on the basis that the prosecutor’s signature
on the information did not constitute a valid signature because it consisted of “/s/”
and a blank underlined space on one line followed by a signature block. In his
motion, Kucharo admitted the motion was not filed within forty days of the filing of
the trial information, but he asked that his late filing be excused for good cause—
the claimed good cause being that the attorney was not Kucharo’s first appointed
attorney, and the new attorney had been appointed only forty-one days before filing
the motion.
The district court denied the motion on the basis that it was untimely.
Kucharo appeals. He contends (1) the signature on the trial information was
invalid; (2) the forty-day deadline to object to a trial information found in the rules
of criminal procedure controls over the thirty-day deadline to object to an invalid
signature found in the rules of electronic procedure; and (3) even if the thirty-day
deadline applies, the district court abused its discretion by declining to extend the
deadline.
Our court has previously expressly rejected Kucharo’s first two arguments.
In State v. Mendoza, we held signatures on a trial information need not be verified
and that an identical signature format to that used here1 satisfied the signature
requirements of our electronic rules. ___ N.W.2d ___, 2023 WL 6293861, at *2–
3 (Iowa Ct. App. 2023). We also held that, even if the signature was defective in
1 This case and Mendoza involve the same county attorney’s office.
3
some way, the defendant was not entitled to dismissal because the claimed defect
did not prejudice the defendant. Id. at *3 (citing Iowa Rules of Criminal
Procedure 2.4(7) and 2.5(5)). In reaching these conclusions, we also held that the
thirty-day deadline for challenging the validity of a signature imposed by Iowa Rule
of Electronic Procedure 16.305(7) controlled over the forty-day deadline for
challenging a trial information imposed by Iowa Rule of Criminal
Procedure 2.11(4). Id. at *2.
Based on our holding in Mendoza, we find no merit in Kucharo’s first two
arguments. And, because we reject Kucharo’s arguments for dismissal on the
merits, the issue of whether the district court should have found good cause to
extend the deadline for filing his motion is moot, as Kucharo’s motion would be
properly denied even if it had been timely.
AFFIRMED.