Cornelius Tyrone Brown v. State of Iowa ( 2024 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 23-1774
Filed November 13, 2024
CORNELIUS TYRONE BROWN,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Joel Dalrymple,
Judge.
An applicant appeals the denial of postconviction relief from his second-
degree sexual assault conviction. AFFIRMED.
Elizabeth K. Elsten, Spirit Lake, for appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Anagha Dixit, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Considered by Schumacher, P.J., Langholz, J., and Carr, S.J.* Buller, J.,
takes no part.
*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206
(2024).
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LANGHOLZ, Judge.
Cornelius Brown was convicted of second-degree sexual abuse after
beating a victim and forcing his mouth onto her genitals. Brown applied for
postconviction relief, arguing he received ineffective assistance of counsel
because his counsel should have subpoenaed documents and interviewed two
witnesses to more accurately portray his relationship with the victim. The district
court denied postconviction relief, finding that counsel did not breach any essential
duty in forgoing the records and witness testimony and that Brown was not
prejudiced by their omission.
Brown appeals, and we affirm based on the lack of prejudice. Brown has
not shown that any overlooked evidence would have moved the needle toward
reasonable doubt. None of the identified documents relate to, let alone contradict,
the evidence showing Brown performed a sex act against the victim’s will using
force creating a substantial risk of death or serious injury. Worse, his two
witnesses both contradicted his trial testimony, which would have damaged his
defense and credibility. So regardless of whether defense counsel breached an
essential duty, Brown has not shown a reasonable probability of a different
outcome in his trial. We thus affirm the court’s denial of postconviction relief.
I.
In 2016, Brown was convicted of second-degree sexual abuse. During his
criminal trial, the State proved the following material facts.
Brown and the victim had been friends since high school. Around midnight
one night, Brown knocked on the victim’s door, asking to use her bathroom and
smelling of alcohol. After leaving the bathroom, Brown asked the victim why she
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refused to be his girlfriend. The victim told him she was not interested in a
relationship. Brown then hit the victim—punching her repeatedly in the face with
a closed fist. After that, he shoved her into the windowsill, causing the blinds to
fall onto her.
The victim tried to fight back—though Brown stood over six feet tall while
the victim was just under five feet—and the two ended up on the floor. Brown then
began strangling her. The victim managed to escape his grasp and ran to the
bathroom. She grabbed a bleach cleaning spray and sprayed Brown in the face.
In response, Brown shoved her into the bathtub, again attempting to strangle her.
Brown then told the victim he loved her, picked her out of the tub, and took her
back to the bedroom. He briefly allowed the victim to rinse the blood from her
mouth, but then resumed beating her. The victim again managed to escape the
apartment and banged on a neighbor’s door for help. No one answered.
Brown dragged the victim by her hair back into the apartment. He then
yanked her onto the bed and forced his mouth onto her vagina—the victim felt
burning from the bleach she had sprayed onto his face. The victim struggled and
kicked Brown off her. Brown then heard neighbors banging on the apartment door,
asking to see the victim. He narrowly opened the door and told them all was fine.
Brown shoved the victim back into her bedroom and told her he would leave
if she allowed him to perform oral sex. The victim thought Brown planned to kill
her and asked to call her son one last time. Brown handed the victim her phone,
and the victim used the opening to bolt from the apartment. She ran to a neighbor
and called her father, who arrived with law enforcement a few minutes later.
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Brown’s attack caused the victim to suffer two black eyes, swollen and split lips,
scratches across her body, ripped out hair, and lockjaw from the strangling.
Brown was taken into custody and ultimately charged with second-degree
sexual abuse and false imprisonment. During a three-day bench trial, the victim
testified about the attack, along with several law enforcement and medical
witnesses. Brown testified in his defense. After the case was submitted, the
district court found Brown guilty as charged and sentenced him to twenty-five years
in prison.1 We affirmed Brown’s convictions on appeal. See State v. Brown,
No. 16-1118, 2017 WL 2181568, at *3–4 (Iowa Ct. App. May 17, 2017).
Brown now seeks postconviction relief, alleging his defense counsel
provided ineffective assistance by failing to adequately investigate his case. In
particular, Brown argues counsel should have subpoenaed phone, social media,
and financial records, which would have better contextualized his relationship with
the victim and corroborated his version of events leading up to his arrival at the
victim’s apartment. He also asserts counsel never interviewed potential witnesses
who would have cast doubt on the victim’s portrayal of their relationship.
After a half-day trial, the postconviction court denied relief. The court found
none of the unsubpoenaed records would have weakened any material fact at trial.
As for the unexplored witnesses, the court likewise found none of their testimonies
would have made a difference, as they had “little firsthand information.” And so,
the postconviction court found counsel did not breach any essential duty, nor was
Brown prejudiced by counsel’s actions. Brown now appeals.
1 Brown was also sentenced to one year of incarceration for the false-imprisonment
conviction, which he has since discharged.
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II.
Criminal defendants are constitutionally entitled to assistance of counsel.
See U.S. Const. amend. VI; Iowa Const. art. I, § 10. We give force to that
constitutional demand by requiring counsel to provide effective assistance. See
Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 686 (1984). And criminal defendants who
believe their defense counsel fell below the constitutional floor may petition for
postconviction relief. See Iowa Code § 822.2(1)(a) (2017). To prove ineffective
assistance, a defendant must show “both that counsel breached an essential duty
and that constitutional prejudice resulted.” Smith v. State, 7 N.W.3d 723, 726
(Iowa 2024). We review the postconviction court’s ruling on ineffective-assistance
issues de novo. Id. at 725.
A defendant must establish counsel breached an essential duty by proving
by a preponderance of the evidence that counsel “did not meet the standard of
performance required by a reasonably competent practitioner.” Id. at 726 (cleaned
up). It is not enough to show “[i]mprovident trial strategy, miscalculated tactics or
mistakes in judgment.” Id. (cleaned up). Rather, we presume counsel performed
competently and will only intervene when errors are so serious they undermine the
adversarial guarantee of the Sixth Amendment. Id. Relevant here, the degree of
counsel’s duty to investigate “turns on the peculiar facts and circumstances of”
each case. Schrier v. State, 347 N.W.2d 657, 662 (Iowa 1984).
And even if we locate unprofessional errors, the defendant must still show
constitutional prejudice. Prejudice exists if “there is a reasonable probability that,
but for counsel’s unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have
been different.” Strickland, 466 U.S. at 694. To that end, counsel’s errors must
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go beyond merely impairing the defendant in presenting a defense. Ledezma v.
State, 626 N.W.2d 134, 143 (Iowa 2001). Instead, we ask “whether there is a
reasonable probability that, absent the errors, the fact finder would have had a
reasonable doubt respecting guilt.” Id. (cleaned up). And “[i]f the claim lacks
prejudice, it can be decided on that ground alone without deciding whether the
attorney performed deficiently.” Id. at 142.
We choose to resolve Brown’s appeal under Strickland’s prejudice prong.
During his criminal trial, Brown confirmed much of the victim’s account. He
admitted punching the victim “again and again,” hitting her with a closed fist on her
head, face, and mouth. He also described being “blinded” by bleach cleaner.
Brown understood he hurt the victim “very bad” and saw her shaking, bleeding,
and crying. And he testified to knowing the victim feared she would die that night.
Brown did contest whether any sex act occurred, testifying that he did not
“want to have sex with” the victim. Yet Brown repeatedly testified to desiring the
victim and wanting to be in a relationship with her. So when considering second-
degree sexual abuse, the district court was left to weigh Brown’s conflicting
testimony against the victim’s credible account, DNA testing showing traces of
male DNA on the victim’s external genitalia, and Brown’s police interview where
he guessed the victim was accusing him of rape.
Brown’s unsubpoenaed evidence does not move the needle toward
reasonable doubt. Brown points to his insurance policy listing the victim and her
son as his beneficiaries, documents showing he paid the victim’s rent, messages
from the victim asking Brown to come over that evening, and financial records
verifying his conduct before arriving at the victim’s apartment. He argues this
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evidence casts doubt on the victim’s more limited characterization of their
relationship, and in turn negates the victim’s credibility.
But none of this evidence contradicts, or even undermines, the evidence
proving second-degree sexual abuse—that Brown performed a sex act against the
victim’s will and did so using “force creating a substantial risk of death or serious
injury” to the victim. See Iowa Code §§ 709.1(1), 709.3(1)(a). Even if Brown and
the victim were financially intertwined, or she had invited him over, that information
does not dent Brown’s testimony showing an escalating course of violent conduct
or the victim’s testimony credibly depicting the moment of sexual abuse. So Brown
has not shown “a reasonable probability that . . . the result of proceeding would
have been different” if defense counsel had introduced these records. Strickland,
466 U.S. at 694.
Nor do Brown’s uninterviewed witnesses undermine our faith in the verdict.
While the charges were pending, Brown identified two people—his sister and
brother-in-law—as potential witnesses who could testify to Brown’s relationship
with the victim. During the postconviction trial, Brown’s sister explained Brown and
the victim were more than friends, though much of her information came from
Brown. And Brown’s brother-in-law likewise testified about the nature of the
victim’s relationship with Brown, again mostly relaying secondhand information.
Yet neither witness’s testimony weakens the evidence proving second-degree
sexual abuse.
Further, had Brown offered both witnesses, they would have undermined
his central defense—they each testified that Brown wanted a sexual relationship
with the victim. Indeed, when the brother-in-law was shown Brown’s trial testimony
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denying sexual feelings for the victim, the brother-in-law responded, “Well he must
be lying because I had seen it with my own eyes.” Brown was not prejudiced by
his counsel passing on two witnesses who would have damaged his defense and
refuted his testimony. See Kane v. State, 436 N.W.2d 624, 629 (Iowa 1989).
Because Brown has not shown a reasonable probability that any of the claimed
errors caused prejudice, we affirm the district court’s denial of postconviction relief.
AFFIRMED.