Opinion ID: 2028488
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Continuing Viability of State v. Cooper.

Text: This court accepted the Baldasar plurality opinion in State v. Cooper, 343 N.W.2d 485, 486 (Iowa 1984), stating that the reasoning of Baldasar and our own view of the importance of counsel dictated that two prior uncounseled convictions could not be used to enhance a theft conviction to theft in the third degree. By implication, we adhered to the view of the Baldasar plurality that this rule applies to any conviction in which imprisonment might be imposed. We are now asked to follow the Nichols decision and recognize that uncounseled misdemeanor convictions are not invalid for enhancement purposes unless imprisonment was actually imposed for the uncounseled conviction. Wilkins argues that, because the result in our Cooper case was premised in part on our own view of the importance of counsel, see 343 N.W.2d at 486, we should continue to follow that precedent. We disagree. Cooper was commenting on an interpretation of the Sixth Amendment of the federal constitution in which only four justices joined. Consequently, we believe that the reference to our view of the matter was intended as an affirmation of the view of the Sixth Amendment expressed by the justices in the Supreme Court's plurality opinion. [2] That view of the federal constitution has now been unambiguously rejected in Nichols. We are therefore not at liberty to continue to follow our holding in Cooper. Because Wilkins was not imprisoned with respect to her prior misdemeanor conviction, her motion based on a denial of counsel should have been rejected. Although Wilkins attempts, for the first time on appeal, to assert a violation of the state constitution, that issue was not raised in the district court. Wilkins' motion to reduce her conviction from third-offense OWI to second-offense OWI was expressly premised on the Sixth Amendment. No state constitutional claim was made. Consequently, we will not consider that issue on appeal.