IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 22-0599

Filed March 8, 2023

STATE OF IOWA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

THOMAS LEE WHITE,

Defendant-Appellant.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, 

John D. Ackerman, Judge.

Thomas Lee White appeals his convictions and sentences for first-degree 

robbery and willful injury causing serious injury. AFFIRMED.

Priscilla E. Forsyth, Sioux City, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Zachary Miller, Assistant Attorney 

General, for appellee.

Considered by Greer, P.J., Chicchelly, J., and Danilson, S.J.*

*Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206 

(2023).
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CHICCHELLY, Judge.

Thomas Lee White appeals his convictions and sentences after a jury found 

him guilty of first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury. He 

contends (1) insufficient evidence supports his conviction for willful injury causing 

serious injury and (2) his convictions must merge. Because substantial evidence 

supports White’s willful-injury conviction and it does not merge with his firstdegree-robbery conviction, we affirm.

White’s convictions result from an October 2021 attack on Jeremiah Jensen 

that White perpetrated with Waylon Brown. We summarized the facts of the crime 

in the opinion affirming Brown’s convictions and sentences on direct appeal:

The attack occurred at around 5:30 a.m. as Jensen walked back to 

his apartment after buying doughnuts from a nearby convenience 

store. Jensen testified that as he approached the apartment 

complex, he encountered Brown, who he knew from the 

neighborhood. When Brown began talking about an incident from 

two weeks earlier involving Brown’s girlfriend, Jensen replied, “I don’t 

care. I got my own problems.” Jensen then heard Brown say, “Get 

him, Tommy,” before Tommy White charged at him with a baseball 

bat. Jensen ran to the front of the building where he knew there was 

a surveillance camera as both men gave chase. As Jensen reached 

the door to the complex, Brown shoved him from behind. Jensen fell 

against the door, and White struck him in the back of the head with 

the bat. The backpack Jensen was wearing was taken along with a 

phone from his pocket before the men left. When Jensen reached 

his apartment, his cousin called 911 for an ambulance. During that 

call, Jensen named Brown and White as his attackers. He was 

transported to a hospital, where thirteen staples were needed to 

close the wounds on his head.

State v. Brown, No. 22-0324, 2023 WL 1812691, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. 

Feb. 8, 2023).
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We begin with White’s challenge to the evidence supporting his conviction 

for wilfull injury causing serious injury. The trial court instructed the jury that to find 

White guilty of that charge, the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that:

1. On or about October 20, 2021, in Woodbury County, Iowa, 

the defendant hit Jeremiah Jensen in the head with a baseball bat.

2. The defendant specifically intended to [cause] a serious 

injury to Jeremiah Jensen.

3. The defendant caused a serious injury to Jeremiah Jensen 

as defined in Jury Instruction No. 22.

White challenges the second of these elements. White admits that he hit Jensen 

in the head with a baseball bat but claims the evidence does not show he did so 

with a specific intent to cause serious injury. 

We review claims of insufficient evidence for correction of errors at law. 

State v. Jones, 967 N.W.2d 336, 339 (Iowa 2021). We view the evidence and the

inferences drawn from it in the light most favorable to the State. Id. We affirm if 

substantial evidence supports the verdict. Id. Because intent “is seldom capable 

of direct proof,” we must infer it from “all the circumstances attending the assault, 

together with all relevant facts and circumstances disclosed by the evidence.” 

State v. Bell, 223 N.W.2d 181, 184 (Iowa 1974).

At trial, the State introduced a video of the assault captured by the security 

camera outside of Jensen’s apartment building. The start of the video shows 

Jensen running to his apartment building followed closely by Brown. White is 

running a few paces behind with a baseball bat in his right hand. Jensen and 

Brown leave the frame as they reach building’s door, and White slows as he 

reaches them, raising his bat and gripping it in both hands. He draws the bat back 

and then surges forward while swinging it. Although the contact with Jensen’s 
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head occurs off-screen, the result is depicted in photographs of the bloody 

lacerations to Jensen’s skull, which doctors closed with staples. 

Substantial evidence supports a finding that White intended to inflict serious 

injury when he assaulted Jensen. White concedes that Jensen sustained a serious 

injury because it caused permanent scarring. See State v. Phams, 342 N.W.2d 

792, 796 (Iowa 1983) (“We have recognized that the statutory definition of serious 

injury includes those ‘injuries which leave the victim “permanently scarred or 

twisted . . . .”’” (citation omitted)). We presume that a defendant intends the 

necessary, natural, and probable consequences of an unlawful act. See State v. 

True, 190 N.W.2d 405, 407 (Iowa 1971). Probable consequences are those that 

a person “standing in like circumstances and possessing like knowledge should 

reasonably expect to result from any act which is knowingly done.” Id. (citation 

omitted). A person in White’s position would reasonably expect that swinging a 

baseball bat at a person’s skull as one swings at a baseball would result in serious 

injury, so the jury could infer that White intended to cause serious injury. See id.

White also contends his convictions for first-degree robbery and willful injury 

causing serious injury merge. He claims the elements of first-degree robbery 

cannot be satisfied without satisfying the elements of willful injury. We considered 

and rejected this argument in Brown, 2023 WL 1812691, at *3–4. For the same 

reasons, White’s claim lacks merit.

We affirm White’s convictions and sentences for first-degree robbery and 

willful injury.

AFFIRMED.