Opinion ID: 1620610
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Iowa Constitution Article I, Section 21 (Bills of Attainder).[16]

Text: A bill of attainder is a legislative determination that metes out punishment to a particular individual or a designated group of persons without a judicial trial. State v. Phillips, 610 N.W.2d 840, 843 (Iowa 2000). Three elements comprise a bill of attainder: a specific legislative target, imposition of punishment, and absence of a judicial trial. Id. The determinative element in this case is imposition of punishment. To assess whether a law imposes punishment, we look to the intentions of the legislature. See State v. Swartz, 601 N.W.2d 348, 351 (Iowa 1999) (noting that if a law is designed to accomplish some other legitimate governmental purpose [besides imposition of punishment] it should stand); Doe v. Poritz, 142 N.J. 1, 662 A.2d 367, 396 (1995) (What counts . . . is the purpose and design of the statutory provision, its remedial goal and purposes, and not the resulting consequential impact, the `sting of punishment,' that may inevitably, but incidentally, flow from it.). By enacting Iowa's SVP statute, the legislature did not intend to punish sexually violent predators. Rather, the stated purposes of the statute are to protect society and facilitate treatment of sexually violent predators. Iowa Code § 229A.1. Therefore, the SVP statute is not a bill of attainder that impermissibly denies petitioners the right to bail.