Opinion ID: 1934564
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Heading: Iowa Code Section 709.2In the Course of.

Text: The defendant claims that even if the victim did sustain a serious injury to her trachea, his counsel was ineffective in failing to move for a judgment of acquittal based upon the State's failure to prove that the victim sustained the serious injury during the commission of the sexual abuse. [2] The defendant contends the injury occurred after the completion of the alleged sex acts and therefore could not elevate his offense to first-degree sexual abuse under Iowa Code section 709.2. In response, the State argues the requirement that the serious injury occur in the course of the sexual abuse is satisfied when the injury is sustained immediately before or after the sex act. Our analysis begins with the statutory language. Section 709.2 provides: A person commits sexual abuse in the first degree when in the course of committing sexual abuse the person causes another serious injury. It does not appear we have previously addressed whether the phrase in the course of requires that the actual infliction of a serious injury occur simultaneous with the commission of the sexual abuse. However, a review of our prior interpretations of similar phrases provides some assistance. For example, we have previously recognized that the phrase during the commission of in Iowa's statute prohibiting the nonconsenual termination of a pregnancy requires that there be a temporal nexus or link between the underling felony and the termination of the pregnancy. See State v. Hippler, 545 N.W.2d 568, 570-71 (Iowa 1996). We similarly conclude that the words in the course of in section 709.2 require that there be a temporal nexus or link between the serious injury and the sexual abuse. Even though we have determined that there must be a nexus between the serious injury and the sexual abuse, the question still remains whether the serious injury must occur simultaneously with the infliction of the sexual abuse. For guidance on this issue we look to our prior interpretations of an earlier version of Iowa's felony-murder rule. In Conner v. State, 362 N.W.2d 449, 452 (Iowa 1985), we observed that a murder occurred in the perpetration of a felony if it was incident to and associated with the felony as part of an unbroken chain of events or as part of one continuous series of acts connected with each another. We also have rejected the argument that the murder had to be contemporaneous with the felony. State v. Conner, 241 N.W.2d 447, 464 (Iowa 1976). Reviewing the entirety of a sequence of events is not new. For example, we have previously declined to impose rigid time or geographic limitations when determining if a defendant's subsequent assaultive behavior was in the furtherance of an escape and therefor elevated a theft to the offense of robbery. See State v. Terry, 544 N.W.2d 449, 452 (Iowa 1996); State v. Jordan, 409 N.W.2d 184, 186 (Iowa 1987). Such an approach is consistent with Iowa Code section 702.13 which provides that a crime commences with the first act directed toward the commission of the crime and ends with the perpetrator's capture or elusion of pursuers. See State v. Tillman, 514 N.W.2d 105, 109 (Iowa 1994). Other jurisdictions have rejected arguments similar to those made by the defendant. For example, the North Carolina Supreme Court has held the serious injury element is sufficiently established if there is a series of incidents forming one continuous transaction between the rape or sexual offense and the infliction of the serious personal injury. State v. Blackstock, 314 N.C. 232, 333 S.E.2d 245, 252 (1985). Such incidents include injuries inflicted to overcome a victim's resistance and to obtain submission, injuries inflicted in an attempt to commit or further a sexual offense, and injuries inflicted for the purpose of concealing the crime or to aid in an assailant's escape. Id. The Missouri Court of Appeals has held the display of a dangerous weapon in the course of rape or sodomy need not occur simultaneously with the sexual offense. State v. Gray, 895 S.W.2d 241, 244 (Mo.Ct. App.1995). As long as the use of the weapon was part of the whole single transaction which constituted the aggravated form of rape or sodomy, the elevation of the offense to a class A felony was appropriate. Id. The Missouri court held that it was [t]he totality, and not the piecemeal, of the transaction or occurrence which must be viewed to determine the issue. Id. at 245. We think the analysis in these cases and in our prior felony-murder cases is persuasive. We hold that under Iowa Code section 709.2 the serious injury need not occur simultaneously with the commission of the sexual abuse in order to constitute first-degree sexual abuse under Iowa Code section 709.2. It is sufficient if the serious injury precedes or follows the sexual abuse as long as the injury and sexual abuse occur as part of an unbroken chain of events or as part of one continuous series of acts connected with one another. There was substantial evidence in the record that the defendant's act of cutting the victim's throat occurred as part of the entirety of a continuous series of acts involving the sexual abuse. Trial counsel breached no duty in declining to move for a judgment of acquittal on this basis.