State Of Iowa Vs. Roosevelt (Nmn) Matlock

IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
No. 146 / 04-0404
Filed May 26, 2006
STATE OF IOWA,
Appellee,
vs.
ROOSEVELT (NMN) MATLOCK,
Appellant.
On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, Jon C.
Fister, Judge.
Defendant appeals from conviction for willful injury and going armed
with intent. The court of appeals affirmed his convictions, but ordered
resentencing. DECISION OF COURT OF APPEALS VACATED; DISTRICT
COURT JUDGMENT REVERSED AND REMANDED.
Linda Del Gallo, State Appellate Defender, and Shellie L. Knipfer,
Assistant State Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Linda J. Hines, Assistant
Attorney General, Thomas J. Ferguson, County Attorney, and Kim Griffith,
Assistant County Attorney, for appellee.
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CARTER, Justice.
Defendant, Roosevelt Matlock, appeals from his convictions for willful
injury in violation of Iowa Code section 708.4(1) (2003) and going armed
with intent in violation of Iowa Code section 708.8. Both convictions
involved being a habitual offender pursuant to Iowa Code section 902.8.
The court of appeals affirmed defendant’s convictions, but ordered
resentencing because, in its view, the sentencing judge had improperly
considered an appellate reversal of defendant’s civil commitment. After
reviewing the record and considering the arguments presented, we disagree
with the reasoning of the court of appeals and the district court with respect
to an evidentiary issue that has been presented. We vacate the decision of
the court of appeals and reverse the judgment of the district court with
respect to both convictions. The case is remanded to that court for further
proceedings consistent with this opinion.
The offenses with which defendant was charged grew out of a
confrontation between him and Joel Riley that began inside the Uptown
Lounge, located in Waterloo, and continued outside that establishment.
The State’s version of the events, as testified to by Riley and his friends, was
as follows. Defendant had repeatedly made incoherent remarks to Riley
inside the bar and bumped into him with his body. When defendant, who
was wearing a purple-violet suit, walked outside the lounge, Riley followed
him and accused defendant of stalking him. He specifically inquired of
defendant, “Why [are] you [stalking] me with that purple ass suit on?” In
addition, Riley referred to defendant as “Barney,” a purple dinosaur in a
children’s television program.
A friend of Riley named Jay Jordan appeared on the scene and
attempted to tug Riley away from defendant. Jordan testified that he had
successfully moved Riley away from defendant when the latter suddenly
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moved close to them and raised and lowered his arm so as to inflict cuts on
Riley’s head and body. Neither Riley nor Jordan was able to see the weapon
that was used to inflict those injuries. Riley experienced a very substantial
quantity of blood spilling from his cheek as well as from cuts on his
forehead, right forearm, and left wrist. Examination revealed that his cheek
had been sliced from his ear to his mouth, and the cut went all the way
through, revealing his teeth through the resulting opening.
Defendant’s version of the events differed from the State’s version.
Defendant testified that he had to separate a friend from a confrontation
with Riley inside the bar. Following this the friend went to the other side of
the bar, and Riley kept making threats toward that person and toward
defendant. Defendant testified that he told Riley that his ranting was
annoying persons in the bar and that he should continue his discussion
outside. Defendant left the bar and was followed by Riley. Once outside the
bar, defendant claims to have backed up against the wall and listened to
more of Riley’s threats against him and his friend. According to defendant,
Riley reached in his pocket and lunged at him, causing him to fear for his
safety. He claims he defended himself by striking out at Riley with a beer
glass, which broke on contact with Riley’s face. He continued to strike Riley
with the broken glass.
When defendant was later apprehended by police, no weapon was
located. At his trial, defendant testified that he had inflicted the injuries on
Riley with a broken beer glass. A physician who performed surgery on
Riley’s face testified that he believed Riley’s wounds were made with a knife
or a box cutter. In his opinion, the clean edges of the cuts negated the
likelihood that they were inflicted by broken glass. Defendant claimed
justification, testifying at trial that Riley had told him inside the Uptown
Lounge that he was a Vice Lord and that he intended to cause harm to
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defendant and a friend of defendant who was also in the bar. He stated that
Riley was backed up by two or three friends. The jury convicted defendant
on both counts. Additional facts will be discussed in our consideration of
the legal issues presented.
I. Issues on Appeal.
The issues raised by defendant on appeal are whether (1) the district
court erred in admitting evidence of other criminal acts by defendant, (2)
defendant’s trial counsel was ineffective for failure to object to the
prosecutor’s closing argument, and (3) the district court improperly
considered the appellate reversal of defendant’s civil commitment in the
process of sentencing him. The court of appeals affirmed the district court’s
action with respect to the first two issues, but agreed with defendant’s
contention on the third issue and ordered resentencing. We granted further
review. We need only consider the first issue.
II. Evidence of Other Crimes.
A. Scope of review. We review district court rulings admitting
evidence of other bad acts for an abuse of discretion and will reverse only
when the rulings are untenable under the substantive limitations of the
rules to be applied. State v. Bayles, 551 N.W.2d 600, 604 (Iowa 1996); State
v. Knox, 536 N.W.2d 735, 738 (Iowa 1995).
B. Preservation of error. Prior to trial, the State moved to introduce
evidence of other bad acts by defendant notwithstanding the limitations
contained in Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.404(b). The defendant objected to the
use of this evidence, arguing that it was an attempt to convict defendant
based upon his propensity to commit bad acts and was not independently
relevant to resolve some legitimate issue in the case. To the extent that the
State urged the evidence was relevant to show the required specific intent
for the crimes alleged, defendant asserted that the evidence could only show
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that intent by improper resort to defendant’s propensity to act in a
particular manner. The district court ruled that the prior bad-acts evidence
was admissible. The State concedes that error has been preserved on
defendant’s challenge to that ruling.
C. The bad-acts evidence sought to be excluded. The evidence sought
to be excluded by defendant involved two incidents. The first occurred
twelve days prior to the offenses that led to the present appeal. Defendant’s
niece and one Moses Childs had been involved in an argument over a
parking place. Defendant advised Childs that he did not approve of the way
that Childs had spoken to his niece. The defendant and Childs argued, and
defendant struck Childs in the side with a sharp object, cutting him. The
wound was approximately one-inch deep and seven inches in length. A
medical expert determined that it was caused by a sharp instrument such
as a knife or box cutter. In addition to allowing this evidence, the district
court permitted Childs’ sister to testify that she heard defendant state two
hours after the stabbing incident that he meant to kill Childs.
The second incident occurred later on the same day as the offenses at
issue in the present appeal. The offenses on which defendant’s present
convictions were based allegedly occurred at approximately 1 a.m. At 1
p.m. on that date defendant was in a bar with Wayne Winters. Winters
challenged defendant over comments he had made concerning Winters’ wife.
Defendant removed a box cutter from his pocket. A bystander named
Frederick Burnside intervened and wrestled defendant to the floor. In the
ensuing scuffle, defendant cut Burnside in the back, chased him from the
bar, and stated that he was going to kill him. In allowing evidence of these
two incidents, the district court ruled that the bad acts were relevant to the
issues of motive, intent, opportunity, and knowledge, and the jury was
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instructed that they could consider the evidence as it pertained to those
matters.
In State v. Sullivan, 679 N.W.2d 19 (Iowa 2004), we considered the use
of bad-acts evidence to show specific intent. We discussed and agreed with
the views of two commentators who considered the use of such evidence for
this purpose to be an unwarranted deviation from the evidentiary rule
excluding evidence of propensity to commit bad acts. Sullivan, 679 N.W.2d
at 26-27. The commentators whose conclusions were discussed in Sullivan
based their conclusions on the fact that, in most instances, the only way
the intent element of the crime on trial may be linked to prior unrelated bad
acts is to assume the accuser’s propensity to entertain the same intent in
similar situations. Id. at 26 (quoting Edward J. Imwinkelried, The Use of
Evidence of an Accused’s Uncharged Misconduct to Prove Mens Rea: The
Doctrines Which Threatened to Engulf the Character Evidence Prohibition, 51
Ohio St. L.J. 575, 583-84 (1990) [hereinafter Imwinkelried]). Similar
considerations are expressed in Abraham P. Ordover, Balancing the
Presumption of Guilt and Innocence: Rules 404(b), 608(b) and 609(a), 38
Emory L.J. 135, 158 (1989). Both of these commentators discuss Federal
Rule of Evidence 404(b), which is the equivalent of Iowa Rule of Evidence
5.404(b).
We concluded in Sullivan that the use of propensity evidence to show
intent is contrary to the purposes of rule 5.404(b). Id. at 29. We held (and
in so doing overruled existing precedent) that other bad acts may only be
allowed as evidence of the required mens rea for the crime charged if the
acts are probative of that intent in a manner other than a propensity of the
accused to act in a particular manner. Id. at 28.
1. The willful injury charge. Under the district court’s instructions,
the elements of the willful injury charge required the State to prove that
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defendant “intended to cause a serious injury to Joel Riley.” We are unable
to ascertain any theory under which the other bad-acts evidence allowed by
the district court tended to show defendant’s intent in the case on trial
other than by resort to his propensity to harm others. This places the bad-
acts evidence outside the boundaries of what is now allowed under Sullivan.
With one exception, the State has suggested no alternative to
propensity as a probative theory for the admission of this evidence to show
specific intent. The one theory that the State does propound is labeled as
“the doctrine of objective chances.” It was relied on by the court of appeals
in approving the use of the bad-acts evidence in the present case. As
described by the court of appeals, this doctrine provides that an accused’s
involvement in several similar acts that on their face appear to have been
done with requisite criminal intent gives rise to an intermediate inference
that it is objectively improbable his involvement in so many similar
incidents was in fact innocent. The doctrine is discussed in the
Imwinkelried article at 595. An examination of the doctrine as described by
that commentator suggests that it is based on the improbability that all
potentially criminal acts in a series of similar actions are innocent.
Imwinkelried states the proposition as follows (as applied to three acts):
It flies in the face of common sense to assume that on all three
occasions, the accused had an innocent state of mind; a
coincidence of three, inadvertent, similar acts is objectively
unlikely.
Id. at 595-96. We are reluctant to accept this doctrine as an alternative
theory for avoiding the limitations established in Sullivan.
As described by Imwinkelried and alluded to by the State in the
present case, the doctrine of objective chances is based on the improbability
that all acts in a series of acts are innocent. The doctrine does not sustain
the conclusion that none of the acts in the series of acts were done without
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the required criminal intent nor does it assist a trier of fact in determining
in which instances that might be so or is not so. Resort to the doctrine of
objective chances is particularly inappropriate with respect to the willful-
injury charge in the present case where a defense of justification was
presented as to one of the bad acts and not shown to have been involved in
the others. This circumstance makes the case on trial sufficiently
dissimilar from the others that the doctrine cannot be applied according to
its own terms.
The district court also concluded that the other bad-acts evidence was
relevant to show motive, opportunity, and knowledge. We disagree. All
three of the stabbings in which defendant was involved grew out of verbal
altercations with the victim. Each of these situations was different from the
others and sheds no light on the motive in the other stabbings. Nor was the
challenged evidence needed to show a particular knowledge on defendant’s
part because that was not a matter required to be established.
Opportunity, as viewed by the district court, had reference to
defendant’s access to a sharp cutting instrument. In considering the
willful-injury charge, it made no difference whether defendant assaulted
Riley with a box cutter or a broken beer glass. His defense in either
instance depended on a claim of justification.1 The other bad-acts evidence
was not admissible for any purpose on the willful-injury charge.
2. The going-armed-with-intent charge. The trial of the going-armed-
with-intent charge presented a factual issue concerning whether defendant
1Under the district court’s instructions, the intent element involved in the jury’s
consideration of the justification defense required the State to prove that defendant could
not have a reasonable belief that the force he used was necessary to avoid imminent danger
of death or serious injury. Because this is an entirely objective standard, it did not involve
proof of a specific intent on defendant’s part but, rather, was dependent on the facts of the
altercation as viewed by the jury. Consequently, the affirmative defense provides no issue
concerning defendant’s intent for which evidence of other bad acts might serve as evidence
under rule 5.404(b).
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was armed with a sharp cutting instrument. The district court instructed
the jury that defendant must be shown to have armed himself with a
cutting device similar to a knife, box cutter, or razor. We conclude that the
evidence of the other stabbing incidents was relevant to show defendant’s
access to a sharp cutting instrument. In weighing the probative value of the
evidence of the other bad acts against the danger of unfair prejudice, we
must consider the actual need for the evidence in light of the issues and the
other evidence available and weigh this against the extent to which the
evidence might improperly influence the jury. State v. White, 668 N.W.2d
850, 855 (Iowa 2003). We are satisfied that the State’s need for evidence to
show defendant’s possession of a sharp cutting instrument was sufficiently
great that the probative value of the circumstances surrounding the other
two stabbing incidents outweighs the prejudicial effect of that evidence.
Nevertheless, the district court erred in permitting the jury to
consider evidence of the other bad acts for purposes of establishing the
specific intent required for the crime. Under the district court’s
instructions, the State was required to establish that defendant armed
himself with a cutting instrument with intent to use that device against
another person without justification. Our cases suggest that with respect to
this crime that intent must be present at the time the accused arms himself
and goes forth to harm another. State v. Ray, 516 N.W.2d 863, 865-66
(Iowa 1994); State v. Slayton, 417 N.W.2d 432, 434-35 (Iowa 1987); see also
State v. Buchanan, 207 N.W.2d 784, 786 (Iowa 1973) (decided under prior
law). We are convinced that the use of the other bad-acts evidence to show
that intent was a resort to defendant’s propensity to commit similar acts,
contrary to the limitation laid down in Sullivan. The district court’s limiting
instruction failed to restrict the jury’s consideration of the bad-acts evidence
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for that improper purpose. 2 This was sufficiently prejudicial to require
reversal of the going-armed-with-intent conviction. On retrial, if evidence of
the other stabbing incidents is allowed to show defendant’s access to a
sharp cutting instrument, the jury should be instructed that this evidence
may be considered for that purpose only on the going-armed-with-intent
charge and for no purpose on the willful-injury charge.
We have considered all issues presented and conclude that the
judgments of conviction on both charges must be reversed and the case
remanded for a new trial.
DECISION OF COURT OF APPEALS VACATED; DISTRICT COURT
JUDGMENT REVERSED AND REMANDED.
2A record was made at the suppression hearing challenging the admission of this
evidence to show intent. The defendant asserted that the evidence was not admissible for
that purpose. The district court ruled otherwise and stated in its ruling that the evidence
would be admitted for purposes of showing motive, intent, knowledge, and opportunity.
The jury was so instructed. Having made his record on these points at the suppression
hearing, defendant was not required to object to the court’s limiting instruction. The court
had already ruled on the basis for the instruction, see James v. Burlington Northern, Inc.,
587 N.W.2d 462, 464 (Iowa 1998) (failure to object to instructions is not an abandonment
of position taken on pretrial rulings that form the basis for instructions); Florke v. Peterson,
245 Iowa 1031, 1036, 65 N.W.2d 372, 375 (1954) (same), and under the circumstances,
defendant could well have viewed some limiting instruction as more favorable than no
limiting instruction.