IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 17-1369

Filed December 19, 2018

STATE OF IOWA,

Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

TODD JUNIOR LANDIS,

Defendant-Appellant.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, David N. May, 

(suppression) and Donna L. Paulsen (trial), Judges.

A defendant appeals his judgment and sentence for operating while 

intoxicated and possession of a controlled substance, third offense. 

CONVICTIONS AFFIRMED; SENTENCING ORDER VACATED IN PART AND 

REMANDED.

Mark C. Smith, State Appellate Defender, and Mary K. Conroy, Assistant 

Appellate Defender, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney 

General, for appellee.

Considered by Danilson, C.J., and Vogel and Tabor, JJ.
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TABOR, Judge.

Todd Landis challenges his convictions for operating while intoxicated 

(OWI) and possession of a controlled substance, third offense, enhanced by his 

habitual-offender status. Landis contends the district court should have excluded 

the marijuana police took from his pocket thirty minutes before arresting him for 

OWI. The court found the marijuana admissible under the search-incident-toarrest exception to the warrant requirement and the inevitable-discovery doctrine. 

We agree with the court’s reliance on inevitable discovery. The State proved jail 

personnel would have found the contraband during the OWI booking process.

Landis also challenges his sentence. He alleges the district court gave only 

“boilerplate” reasons for incarceration. To the contrary, the court explained its 

rationale, emphasizing Landis’s prior convictions and “experience on probation.” 

As a result, we can review its exercise of discretion and affirm the concurrent prison 

terms. On Landis’s final issue, we remand for entry of a corrected sentencing order 

assessing the costs of his dismissed simple-misdemeanor charge to the State.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings

Around 11:15 on a Sunday morning, Landis ran a red light in downtown Des 

Moines. He crashed his Jeep Compass into another motorist crossing the 

intersection. Police Officer Eric Moorman and State Trooper Matthew Raes both 

responded to the collision. 

Officer Moorman found Landis standing outside his Jeep, which suffered 

heavy front-end damage. The officer “smelled the odor of alcoholic beverage” 

when he approached Landis. Landis told the officer “somebody hit him and took 

off.” During their conversation, the officer also noticed Landis was slurring his 
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speech and was “slow about thinking, seemed confused.” Officer Moorman—who 

has more than thirty years of law enforcement experience—believed Landis was 

intoxicated and called a traffic officer, Ryan King, “to come down and test him.”

Upon arrival, Trooper Raes first checked on the welfare of the other driver,

who was still at the scene. When he made contact with Landis, the trooper noted

“bloodshot, watery eyes and a very strong odor of an alcoholic beverage coming 

from his person.”

During their interaction outside the cars, which occurred around 11:30 a.m., 

Officer Moorman and Trooper Raes searched the front pocket of Landis’s shorts. 

They pulled out a clear plastic bag containing “a green leafy substance which 

looked and smelled like marijuana; a drug cutter, [which] cuts the marijuana; and 

a dope pipe.” Neither Trooper Raes nor Officer Moorman told Landis he was under 

arrest. In fact, Officer Moorman turned the investigation over to Officer King.

Landis was waiting in Officer Moorman’s patrol car when Officer King 

arrived. Officer King recalled “an odor of alcoholic beverages that could be 

detected coming from the rear of the patrol car.” As part of his investigation, Officer 

King asked Landis to complete field sobriety tests and a preliminary breath test. 

But Landis declined. Officer King placed Landis under arrest at noon. At the police 

station, Landis refused to submit to a breath test.

As a result of this investigation, the State charged Landis with two counts: 

(1) operating while intoxicated, a serious misdemeanor in violation of Iowa Code 

section 321J.2 (2016) and (2) possession of marijuana, a class “D” felony in 

violation of section 124.401(5), as a third offense. The State also invoked the 

habitual offender provisions under Iowa Code section 902.8. Landis moved to 
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suppress the marijuana and paraphernalia found in his pocket, alleging the search 

violated the state and federal constitutions. After a hearing, the district court 

overruled the motion to suppress. The court held the evidence was admissible 

under the search-incident-to-arrest exception or, alternatively, under the 

inevitable-discovery doctrine. 

After his unsuccessful suppression motion, Landis waived his right to a jury 

trial and stipulated to a trial on the minutes of testimony. The district court found 

him guilty on both counts. After the sentencing hearing, the court denied probation 

and imposed concurrent prison terms of one year and fifteen years, with a 

mandatory minimum of three years before eligibility for parole. In its written 

sentencing order, the court dismissed a related simple misdemeanor charge but 

ordered Landis to pay court costs on the dismissed case. Landis now appeals.

II. Scope and Standards of Review

Because Landis raises his first challenge under the Fourth Amendment of 

the United States Constitution and article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution, our 

review is de novo. See State v. Brown, 905 N.W.2d 846, 848 (Iowa 2018). We 

review his second and third issues, involving the sentencing proceeding, for legal 

error. See State v. Hensley, 911 N.W.2d 678, 681 (Iowa 2018).

III. Analysis

A. Should the district court have excluded the marijuana evidence?

Landis moved to suppress the marijuana and drug paraphernalia seized by 

Officer Moorman and Trooper Raes. He cited both the Iowa and United States
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constitutions.

1 Both constitutions protect the rights of individuals to be “secure in 

their persons” against unreasonable searches and seizures. U.S. Const. amend. 

IV; Iowa Const. art. I, § 8. “Warrantless searches and seizures are per se 

unreasonable, unless one of the few carefully drawn exceptions to the warrant 

requirement exists.” State v. Freeman, 705 N.W.2d 293, 297 (Iowa 2005). 

A search incident to arrest qualifies as an exception. See State v. Gaskins, 

866 N.W.2d 1, 8 (Iowa 2015) (reiterating purpose as officer safety and evidence 

preservation implicated by custodial situations). A search incident to an arrest is 

valid even if it precedes a formal arrest when the search is “substantially 

contemporaneous” with the suspect being taken into custody. State v. Peterson, 

515 N.W.2d 23, 25 (Iowa 1994). But Landis asserts his arrest—one-half hour after 

the officers searched his pockets—was not substantially contemporaneous. He 

cites Washington case law in support of his contention “a valid custodial arrest is 

a ‘condition precedent to a search incident to arrest as an exception to the warrant 

requirement’ under article I, section 8 of the Iowa Constitution.”

2

 See State v. 

O’Neill, 62 P.3d 489, 502 (Wash. 2003). 

In defense of the suppression ruling, the State cautions against “reflexively” 

adopting a new interpretation of the timing required for searches incident to arrest 

under article I, section 8. The State also balks at “fixating on the precise number 

 

1

Iowa’s appellate courts may “construe a provision of our state constitution differently than 

its federal counterpart, though the two provisions may contain nearly identical language 

and have the same general scope, import, and purpose.” See State v. White, 887 N.W.2d 

172, 175–76 (Iowa 2016). 

2 Landis asked the supreme court to retain this appeal to adopt a narrower interpretation 

of the search-incident-to-arrest exception under the state constitution. Instead, the 

supreme court transferred the case to us. 
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of minutes” between the search and formal arrest. In the prosecution’s view, 

Officer Moorman manifested his intent to arrest Landis just after the search.3

Rather than diving into the murky waters of searches incident to arrest, we 

opt to resolve this appeal on the alternative grounds offered by the inevitablediscovery doctrine. Under that doctrine, probative evidence—even if gathered 

illegally—is admissible without offending the constitution if police would have 

“inevitably discovered the same evidence acting properly.” State v. Christianson,

627 N.W.2d 910, 912 (Iowa 2001). If the police would have ultimately discovered

the evidence by lawful means, using the Fourth Amendment to exclude the 

evidence serves no legitimate purpose. State v. Seager, 571 N.W.2d 204, 211 

(Iowa 1997).

For three reasons, Landis claims inevitable discovery should not save the 

State’s evidence. In his estimation, (1) the State failed to prove admissibility under 

the federal test; (2) courts should not recognize the inevitable-discovery doctrine 

under article I, section 8; or (3) courts should impose greater restrictions on the 

doctrine under article I, section 8. We are not at liberty to depart from precedent, 

and Landis directed his second and third requests to our supreme court. See State 

v. Beck, 854 N.W.2d 56, 64 (Iowa Ct. App. 2014),

Because our supreme court has so far followed federal constitutional law 

on inevitable discovery, we do the same today. See generally State v. Tyler, 867 

 

3 The State cites State v. Moorehead, 699 N.W.2d 667, 672 (Iowa 2005), but does not 

discuss how that case supports the proposition the officer’s subjective “intent to arrest” 

affects our analysis of whether the search was “substantially contemporaneous” or 

whether an officer’s intent makes it more or less likely the arrest was “substantially 

contemporaneous.”
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N.W.2d 136, 171 (Iowa 2015) (citing State v. McGrane, 733 N.W.2d 671, 681 (Iowa 

2007) and Christianson, 627 N.W.2d at 912 (both quoting Nix v. Williams, 467 U.S. 

431, 443–44 (1984))). As a result, we will address only Landis’s first reason for 

rejecting application of inevitable discovery—that the prosecution failed to show 

an exception to the exclusionary rule under the Fourth Amendment.

Assuming the officers illegally searched Landis’s pocket, we must decide if 

the Fourth Amendment required the district court to exclude the fruits of that 

illegality. Competing virtues are at stake. Exclusion deters future police 

misconduct. But suppressing relevant information also exacts a price on society 

and the administration of justice. Seager, 571 N.W.2d at 211. Our supreme court 

summarized the tension: 

The exclusionary rule ensures the prosecution does not gain an 

advantage from the illegality that it would not otherwise have had. In 

this way, the rule discourages illegal police conduct. On the other 

hand, the exceptions to the exclusionary rule assure the prosecution 

is not put in a worse position than it would have been in had the 

police misconduct not occurred. 

Id. 

Here, the prosecution gained no advantage by the premature seizure of the 

marijuana from Landis’s pocket. The district court properly denied his motion to 

suppress because officers would have inevitably discovered the contraband when 

booking him into the county jail on the OWI charge.

4

 Officer King testified “upon 

completion of the testing and the charges being filed,” officers typically transport 

an arrestee to the Polk County jail where the arrestee would be searched as part 

 

4 On the dashboard camera recording, Landis repeatedly asks the officers about posting 

bond. Officer Moorman explains he will not know the amount of bond until he takes Landis 

to the jail for booking.
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of the booking process. The inevitable-discovery exception to the exclusionary 

rule applies to evidence officers would have legally seized at the jail. See State v. 

Green, No. 06-2051, 2008 WL 680385, at *5 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 14, 2008). 

Like our court in Green, other jurisdictions have recognized the inevitability 

of finding evidence during booking. See, e.g., United States v. Peterson, 902 F.3d 

1016, 1020 (9th Cir. 2018) (upholding district court conclusion “warrantless search 

of Peterson’s backpack was not justified as a search incident to arrest, but that the 

evidence nonetheless was not subject to exclusion because it inevitably would 

have been discovered during an inventory search at the time of booking”); United 

States v. Almeida, 748 F.3d 41, 49 (1st Cir. 2014) (holding “arrest and subsequent 

seizure of cash during the booking process at the jail would have occurred 

independently of the challenged seizure.”); State v. Rodewald, 376 N.W.2d 416, 

418, 422 (Minn. 1985) (finding jailer would have inevitably discovered LSD blotter 

in arrestee’s wallet and seized it); State v. Frazee, No. 26699, 2015 WL 7428574, 

at *6 (Ohio Ct. App. Nov. 20, 2015) (“Even if the search of Frazee’s coat and its 

contents did not qualify as a search incident to arrest, we agree with the State’s 

argument that the heroin would still be admissible because it would have been 

inevitably discovered by law enforcement during a routine inventory search when 

Frazee was booked into jail.”); State v. Johnson, No. M2013–00301–CCA–R3–

CD, 2014 WL 2016712, at *10 (Tenn. Crim. App. May 15, 2014) (“It is clear from 

the testimony that a search of the Defendant as a part of a normal administrative 

booking procedure at the jail was imminent.”). These decisions provide persuasive 

authority for declining to apply the exclusionary rule. In like manner, we affirm the 

suppression ruling based on inevitable discovery.
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B. Did the district court give sufficient reasons for its sentence?

If unsuccessful in his suppression claim, Landis wishes to be resentenced. 

He contends by relying too heavily on boilerplate5language, the district court failed 

to satisfy its mandate to “state on the record its reason for selecting a particular 

sentence.” See Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.23(3)(d). The district court’s statement of 

reasons enables the reviewing court “to assess whether there has been an abuse 

of discretion in sentencing.” See State v. Thacker, 862 N.W.2d 402, 407 (Iowa 

2015) (warning a “boilerplate language approach” will not satisfy the rule).

We find enough original content in the sentencing court’s statements to 

evaluate its exercise of discretion. It is true the sentencing court prefaced its 

reasons by reciting the generic language of Iowa Code section 901.5:

I’ve considered all my options under Iowa Code Chapters 901 and 

907, and my judgment relative to sentence is based on that which 

would provide maximum opportunity for rehabilitation of the 

defendant, as well as protection of the community against further 

offenses by defendant and others.

But then the court visited the factors it found pertinent to imposing a sentence of 

incarceration: 

In selecting a particular sentence for you, I’ve considered, among 

other things, the presentence investigation [PSI] report, the 

statements of counsel, your statement, your age, your criminal 

record, your prior—including your prior convictions, your experience 

on probation.

 

5 The law imported the word “boilerplate” from the early newspaper industry, where it 

referred to syndicated news stories shipped on metal plates to supplement local news in 

small-town papers. See Carol Bast, A Short History of Boilerplate, 5 Scribes J. Leg. 

Writing 155, 156 (1995). Duplicating news articles resembled duplicating iron plates for 

steam boilers. Id. The term became a derogatory description of duplicated content. Id.
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Significantly, the PSI revealed Landis had been “sentenced to probation 

seven times (four revoked, two discharged, one discharge status unable to 

determine), prison six times (discharged six times), work release once (revoked), 

and parole once (revoked).” Unsurprisingly, the PSI preparer recommended 

incarceration based on Landis’s “lengthy criminal history” and “poor compliance 

during previous periods of community supervision.” We can decipher from the 

sentencing court’s nod to the PSI and mention of Landis’s “prior convictions” and 

his “experience on probation” it took that recommendation to heart. 

The court then listed additional factors influencing its decision to impose 

concurrent prison terms. 

I’ve considered your employment circumstances, your family 

circumstances, the nature of this offense committed—I guess the two 

offenses we’re dealing with here today, all in light of your overall 

prospects for rehabilitation and what’s needed to protect the 

community.

While the sentencing court could have delivered a more personalized rationale, its 

statements rose above the dreaded boilerplate.

Landis also expresses concern the sentencing court did not know it could 

suspend his sentence. See State v. Washington, 356 N.W.2d 192, 197 (Iowa 

1984) (interpreting Iowa Code section 902.8 as allowing probation). The record 

does not credit that concern. The prosecutor endorsed the PSI’s recommendation 

of incarceration for the protection of the community. In doing so, the clear 

implication was the court had discretion to place Landis on probation. What’s 

more, the court expressly stated it considered its options under chapter 907, which 

governs suspended sentences and probation. On this record, we affirm the 

concurrent prison terms.
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C. Did the district court err in assessing costs of the dismissed 

charge?

On a final limited note, Landis complains the written order that he pay costs 

associated with a dismissed charge is “a statutorily unauthorized, illegal sentence.” 

The State agrees with Landis’s assertion an assessment of court costs for the 

dismissed simple misdemeanor charge would be an illegal sentence. See State 

v. Petrie, 478 N.W.2d 620, 622 (Iowa 1991) (“[T]he provisions of Iowa Code section 

815.13 and section 910.2 clearly require, where the plea agreement is silent 

regarding the payment of fees and costs, that only such fees and costs attributable 

to the charge on which a criminal defendant is convicted should be recoverable 

under a restitution plan.”). We vacate this portion of Landis’s sentence and remand 

for entry of a corrected order. See Brown, 905 N.W.2d at 857.

CONVICTIONS AFFIRMED; SENTENCING ORDER VACATED IN PART

AND REMANDED.