IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 20-0536

Filed June 30, 2021

RICKY LEON RIDDLE,

Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,

Respondent-Appellee.

________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Lee (South) County, Mary Ann 

Brown, Judge.

The applicant appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief. 

AFFIRMED.

William Monroe, Burlington, for appellant.

Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Zachary Miller, Assistant Attorney 

General, for appellee State.

Considered by May, P.J., and Greer and Schumacher, JJ.
2

GREER, Judge.

Ricky Riddle appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief 

(PCR) following his 2017 conviction for intimidation with a dangerous weapon. See 

Iowa Code § 708.6 (2017). “We typically review [PCR] proceedings on error” but 

we review “claim of a constitutional nature . . . de novo.” Ledezma v. State, 626 

N.W.2d 134, 141 (Iowa 2001). 

At Riddle’s trial,

the complaining witness, who was the on-again, off-again girlfriend 

of Riddle for the previous twenty years, testified that in the early 

morning hours of Wednesday, May 17, she was driving her father’s 

car around town because she was bored. As she got near a specific 

intersection, she noticed Riddle standing under a streetlight, wearing 

a shirt she had bought him. She testified at that point in their 

relationship, they “were fighting. [They] had been fighting a lot.”

Because he looked angry when she saw him, she wanted to leave 

without talking to him. She testified he started coming toward her 

vehicle, so she put it in reverse and began to drive away. At about 

the same time, Riddle “pulled the gun out and started shooting 

towards the car.” Then, while still driving away from Riddle, she 

heard a hissing noise. As she continued to drive away, the witness 

called the police and reported the incident; during the call, she 

identified Riddle as the shooter.

During the drive, the witness realized that the front, driver-side 

tire had gone flat. An officer responded at 2:58 a.m. The police later 

inspected the tire: they found a hole in it and, once they had removed 

it from the rim, pieces of shrapnel loose inside the tire. Officers also 

later located a shell casing in the general area the shooting had 

occurred according to the description of the complaining witness.

State v. Riddle, No. 17-1729, 2018 WL 4923130, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 10, 

2018). The jury convicted Riddle as charged, and he was sentenced to a term of 

incarceration not to exceed ten years.1 

 

1 Riddle directly appealed his conviction, which this court affirmed. Riddle, 2018 

WL 4923130, at *7.
3

Riddle filed a PCR application in January 2019, which he later amended 

with the assistance of counsel. In that application, Riddle claimed he received 

ineffective assistance from trial counsel because counsel failed to impeach the trial 

testimony of the State’s main witness with her sworn deposition.

2

 Specifically, 

Riddle argued his attorney should have impeached the witness because she 

testified at trial, “And that’s when he, like, pulled the gun out and started shooting 

towards the car.” He maintained this was at odds with the witness’s sworn 

deposition, when she testified she did not see Riddle with a gun. Riddle raised the 

issue using the traditional prejudice analysis found in Strickland v. Washington, 

466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984). See Krogmann v. State, 914 N.W.2d 293, 313 (Iowa 

2018) (“In Strickland, the Court declared that for most attorney errors, a defendant 

who demonstrates counsel breached an essential duty must also show prejudice 

in order to be entitled to relief.”). 

The PCR court ruled Riddle did not prove his claim of ineffective assistance. 

Riddle’s trial attorney did not need to impeach the witness because on crossexamination, when the attorney asked, “Now, you testified today that you saw him 

pull a gun out?” the witness responded, “I didn’t see him pull a gun out. I never 

seen a gun.” Riddle’s attorney pressed, “You never saw a gun?” and the witness 

responded, “No, never did; never seen a gun that night; never seen a gun.” The 

witness then explained that she saw Riddle “reach for whatever” and then 

“whatever he pulled out, said pop, pop, pop, like a gunshot” but she never saw a 

gun. And, according to the PCR court, Riddle’s assertion that “the cross-

 

2 Riddle also alleged four other ways trial counsel allegedly breached a duty; he 

has not re-raised those issues on appeal. 
4

examination would have been more effective before the jury if trial counsel had 

used [the witness’s] own words from her deposition to do this” was “mere 

speculation” and could be chalked up to trial strategy. See Ledezma, 626 N.W.2d 

at 143 (“Miscalculated trial strategies and mere mistakes in judgment normally do 

not rise to the level of ineffective assistance of counsel.”). 

Insofar as Riddle’s claim on appeal is that the PCR court was wrong about 

whether he proved counsel breached an essential duty that caused him prejudice, 

we disagree. See State v. Clay, 824 N.W.2d 488, 495 (Iowa 2012) (“To prevail on 

a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, a claimant must satisfy the Strickland 

test by showing ‘(1) counsel failed to perform an essential duty; and (2) prejudice 

resulted.’” (citation omitted)). Counsel elicited the information from the State’s 

witness that Riddle maintains the jury needed to hear, and he has not established 

that doing so in a different way would have led to his acquittal. 

It seems to us (and the State) that Riddle has attempted to repackage his 

PCR claim on appeal; he now asserts counsel’s failure to impeach the witness 

amounted to structural error so he need not prove he was prejudiced. See 

Krogmann, 914 N.W.2d at 313 (“Situations where a showing of prejudice is not

required for ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims generally manifest as what 

have been labeled ‘structural errors.’ A structural error or defect has been said to 

arise when the flaw ‘affect[s] the framework within which the trial proceeds.’ 

Structural error occurs and prejudice is presumed where, under the circumstances, 

the likelihood of counsel rendering effective assistance is too remote.” (alteration 

in original) (citations omitted)). But Riddle never raised the issue of structural error 

before, so this claim is not preserved for our review. See Meier v. Senecaut, 641 
5

N.W.2d 532, 537 (Iowa 2002) (“It is a fundamental doctrine of appellate review that 

issues must ordinarily be both raised and decided by the district court before we 

will decide them on appeal.”); see also State v. Mulvaney, 600 N.W.2d 291, 293 

(Iowa 1999) (“[W]e require error preservation even on constitutional issues.”). And 

Riddle does not claim on appeal that his PCR counsel was ineffective for failing to 

raise the issue, so his structural-error claim does not fall within that exception to 

our traditional error-preservation rules. See State v. Fountain, 786 N.W.2d 260, 

262–63 (Iowa 2010) (“Ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims are an exception to 

the traditional error-preservation rules.”); see also State v. Harris, 919 N.W.2d 753, 

754 (Iowa 2018) (“When counsel fails to preserve error at trial, a defendant can 

have the matter reviewed as an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claim.”). We will 

not consider Riddle’s structural-error claim.

We affirm the denial of Riddle PCR application. 

AFFIRMED.