IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA No. 15

- 1124 Filed March 23, 2016
STATE OF IOWA, Plaintiff

- Appellee,

vs. JASEN MARAN SALIN , Defendant

- Appellant.

________________________________________________________________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Winnebago and Worth Count ies , Gregg R. Rosenbladt (plea) and Colleen D. Weiland (sentencing) , Judge s

.

A convicted sex offender contends his mandatory minimum sentences

v iolate the separation of powers doctrine under the Iowa Constitution.
AFFIRMED.

Mark C. Smith , State Appellate Defender, and Vidhya K. Reddy , Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant. Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Genevieve Reinkoester , Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.

Considered by Tabor, P.J., and Bower and McDonald, JJ.2

TABOR, Presiding Judge. Occasionally, an a ppeal is lost at the routing stage. That is true here. Jasen Salin asked the Iowa S upreme Court to retain his case because he alleged a substantial question of changing legal principles concerning the constitutionality of the mandatory minimum terms connected to his second

degree sexual abuse convictions. See Iowa R . App. P. 6.903(2)( d), 6.1101(2)(a), (f). Salin a rgues the s entencing scheme mandated by Iowa Code section 902.12(3) (2011) violate s the separation of powers doctrine in our state constitution. Sali n acknowledges the Iowa Supreme Court has rejected this argument, but urges the issue be reconsidered. Because the supreme court transferred the case to us, such reconsideration is not possible. See State v. Hastings , 466 N.W.2d 697, 700 (Iowa Ct. App. 1990) (“ We are not at liberty to overturn Iowa Supreme Court precedent. ”). Sali n pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual abuse in the second degree , class “B” felonies, in violation of Iowa Code section s 709.1 and 709.3(2). The forty

- three

- year - old defendant admitted to twice having sexual intercourse with a child under the ag e of twelve. The district court sentenced him to indeterminate prison terms of twenty

- five years, subject to mandatory minimum terms of seventy percent. The court ordered the sentences be served concurrently. On appeal, Sali n contends the mandatory term s constit ute illegal
sentence s , or alternatively, trial counsel was ineffective in not raising a constitutional objection to the sentences. 1 He relies on article III, section 1 of the

1 Normally, we review a constitutional challenge to an illegal sentence de novo. State v. Ragland , 836 N.W.2 d 107, 113 (Iowa 2013).3

Iowa Constitution, which divides the powers of state government among t hree departments

— legislative, executive, and judicial

— and prohibits any one of those departments from exercising “any function appertaining to either of the others.” Sali n argues the legislature’s statutory scheme , as applied to his sex

- abuse felonies , impermissibly prohibits the courts from suspending the sentences of incarceration. He recognizes the Iowa Supreme Court has already rejected other separation

- of

- powers challenges to mandatory sentencing. See, e.g. , State v. Phillips , 610 N.W.2d 840, 842 (Iowa 2000); State v. Holmes , 276 N.W.2d 823, 830 (Iowa 1979) . But he asks that those precedents be overruled. Because we cannot overrule published holdings of our supreme court, we affirm Sali n’s
sentences. See State v. Pennell , No. 15

- 0593, 2016 WL 742807 , *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 24, 2016).
AFFIRMED.