IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 13-1931

Filed December 10, 2014

TOBY RICHARDS,

Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,

Respondent-Appellee.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Muscatine County, Thomas G. 

Reidel, Judge. 

Toby Richards appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment to 

the State resulting in the dismissal of his application for postconviction relief. 

AFFIRMED.

Shawn C. McCullough of the Law Office of Jeffrey L. Powell, Washington, 

for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Mary A. Triick, Assistant Attorney 

General, and Alan R. Ostergren, County Attorney, for appellee.

Considered by Mullins, P.J., and Bower and McDonald, JJ.
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BOWER, J.

Toby Richards appeals the district court’s grant of summary judgment to 

the State resulting in the dismissal of his application for postconviction relief 

(PCR). We affirm on appeal by memorandum opinion pursuant to Iowa Court 

Rule 21.26(1)(a).

On August 18, 2012, the Muscatine County Sheriff’s Office received an 

anonymous email tip stating Richards was driving a motorcycle from Davenport 

to Muscatine while his license was barred. Captain Lerch, of the Muscatine 

County Sheriff’s Office, investigated the tip and confirmed Richards’s license was 

barred. Later, after observing a motorcycle being driven by a male subject 

matching the description of Richards, Lerch initiated a traffic stop. After stopping 

Richards, Lerch verified Richards’s identity and arrested Richards for driving 

while barred. Richards pled guilty to driving while barred. He filed an application 

for PCR on November 4, 2013, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel

because his trial attorney did not move to suppress the anonymous tip received 

by the sheriff’s office. The State filed a motion for summary disposition. 

“We normally review postconviction proceedings for errors at law. This 

includes summary dismissals of applications for postconviction relief.” Castro v. 

State, 795 N.W.2d 789, 792 (Iowa 2011) (citations omitted). We review 

ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims de novo. State v. Straw, 709 N.W.2d 

128, 133 (Iowa 2006).

The standards for summary judgment in postconviction relief 

actions are analogous to summary judgment in civil proceedings. 

Under these standards, summary judgment is proper when the 

record reveals only a conflict over the legal consequences of 
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undisputed facts. The moving party is required to affirmatively 

establish that the undisputed facts support judgment under the 

controlling law.

Castro, 795 N.W.2d at 793 (citations omitted).

Richards claims the district court erred in granting the State’s motion for 

summary disposition because there are genuine issues of material fact involved 

in the postconviction-relief appeal. We agree with the district court’s reasoning:1

The fact that the officer began his investigation into the 

background and driving status of [Richards] based on an 

anonymous tip is not constitutionally relevant. The Court finds that 

the officer had enough information to conduct a brief investigatory 

stop to confirm or refute the reasonable suspicion that he observed

a violation of the law. Illinois v. Wardlow, 528 U.S. 119, 123 (2000); 

State v. Richardson, 501 N.W.2d 495, 497 (Iowa 1993) (“The 

principal function of an investigatory stop is to resolve the ambiguity 

as to whether criminal activity is afoot.”).

. . . . 

In this case, there is not only an anonymous tip that 

[Richards] was operating a motor vehicle while his privileges were 

barred, but there was also independent verification that [Richards’s]

driving privileges were not intact, along with investigation into 

[Richards], that provided Captain Lerch with independent means to 

effectuate the traffic stop. The anonymous tip combined with the 

independent investigation and observations of Captain Lerch 

clearly distinguish this case from cases that have previously 

excluded stops based on an anonymous tip. The State correctly 

states that counsel is not ineffective for failure to predict a change 

in the law. State v. Schoelerman, 315 N.W.2d 67, 72 (Iowa 1982). 

Counsel had no obligation to file a Motion to Suppress in this 

matter.

There are no genuine issues of material fact on this issue even when 

viewed in the light most favorable to Richards. We affirm the court’s grant of the 

 

1 The district court also noted State v. Kooima, 833 N.W.2d 202 (Iowa 2013), is not 

applicable to this case because Kooima was decided on June 28, 2013, and Richards’s

conviction became final on March 21, 2013, as he did not file an appeal. We agree.

Also, this case is easily distinguished from Kooima in that Captain Lerch had conducted 

an independent investigation of the status of Richards’s driving privileges.
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State’s motion for summary disposition and dismissal of Richards’s application 

for PCR.

AFFIRMED.