IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 16-0240

Filed November 23, 2016

JOSHUA KENYADA WEATHERSPOON,

Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,

Respondent-Appellee.

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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Story County, James A. McGlynn, 

Judge.

Joshua Weatherspoon appeals the district court’s denial of his 

postconviction-relief application. AFFIRMED.

Andrew J. Boettger of Hastings, Gartin & Boettger, L.L.P., Ames, for 

appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Kevin R. Cmelik, Assistant 

Attorney General, for appellee State.

Considered by Vogel, P.J., and Vaitheswaran and McDonald, JJ.
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VAITHESWARAN, Judge.

A jury found Joshua Weatherspoon guilty of second-degree robbery, firstdegree theft, two counts of forgery, and two counts of unauthorized use of a 

credit card. This court affirmed his judgment and sentence. See State v. 

Weatherspoon, No. 13-1528, 2015 WL 161943, at *5 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 14, 

2015). 

Weatherspoon filed a postconviction-relief application raising several 

claims. The district court denied the application following a hearing. On appeal, 

Weatherspoon challenges his attorney’s performance on cross-examination of a 

witness who knew Weatherspoon and identified him on surveillance video. He 

argues his attorney was ineffective in failing to impeach the witness with 

jailhouse audio recordings of conversations the witness had with Weatherspoon. 

Weatherspoon must establish the breach of an essential duty and 

prejudice. See Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). The district 

court concluded Weatherspoon could establish neither: 

The applicant complains that trial counsel failed to vigorously 

pursue impeachment evidence using a recorded phone 

conversation simply because there were some technical difficulties. 

This was [a] matter of trial strategy. As the Court understands it, 

the recorded phone conversations were calls made by the 

defendant from the Story County Jail, mostly to [the witness]. The 

phone conversations were problematic for several reasons. Trial 

counsel objected to the State’s use of the phone calls because of 

prejudicial inferences the jury might draw if the jury learned the 

defendant was in jail and that he was unable to secure his release 

from jail. There were also concerns that some of the phone

conversations could be interpreted as efforts made by the 

defendant to influence the testimony of [the witness]. Any 

statements made by the applicant would at best be self-serving and 

at worst could be incriminating. Under the circumstances the Court 

FINDS it was a fair exercise of trial strategy to decide that the 

recorded conversations were not helpful to the applicant. The 
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applicant has failed to show how he was prejudiced. The Court 

FINDS the applicant has failed to meet his burden of proof on this

point and that this point must . . . be denied.

Our review is de novo. State v. Thorndike, 860 N.W.2d 316, 319 (Iowa 2015). 

Weatherspoon testified the recordings would have painted a different 

picture of him than the witness painted at trial. In his view, the witness’ 

friendliness towards him as reflected in the recordings would have rendered her 

hostile trial testimony less believable. 

Weatherspoon’s attorney disagreed. She acknowledged an initial attempt

to play some of the recordings. When technical difficulties stymied her efforts, 

she decided not to use them. She testified the impeachment value of the 

nineteen hours of recordings was not “spot on” and use of the recordings would 

have proven to be impractical and ineffectual.

We conclude Weatherspoon’s trial attorney exercised reasonable trial 

strategy in deciding not to impeach the witness with the recordings. Accordingly, 

we affirm the denial of Weatherspoon’s postconviction-relief application. 

AFFIRMED.