Opinion ID: 1901039
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Approach to Cruel and Unusual Punishment Under the Iowa Constitution.

Text: Article I, section 17 of the Iowa Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment in language materially identical to its federal counterpart. Our past cases have generally assumed that the standards for assessing whether a sentence amounts to cruel and unusual punishment under the Iowa Constitution are identical to the Federal Constitution. State v. Musser, 721 N.W.2d 734, 749 (Iowa 2006). In a number of cases, we have addressed whether the court may consider individual facts and circumstances in evaluating a challenge to a sentence as cruel and unusual. Our recent cases, relying in part on Harmelin, have indicated that an individualized challenge to the application of a statutorily-authorized sentence may not lie in the context of convictions for indecent exposure, criminal transmission of HIV, first-degree burglary, and commission of multiple forceable felonies. State v. Wade, 757 N.W.2d 618, 624 (Iowa 2008); Musser, 721 N.W.2d at 749; State v. Rubino, 602 N.W.2d 558, 564 (Iowa 1999); State v. August, 589 N.W.2d 740, 743 (Iowa 1999). We have also considered attacks on mandatory sentences. In State v. Fuhrmann, 261 N.W.2d 475 (Iowa 1978), we considered an attack on Iowa Code section 690.2, which mandated a life sentence for first-degree murder. We rejected the challenge, noting that life imprisonment for first-degree murder does not shock the conscience or sense of justice. Fuhrmann, 261 N.W.2d at 479-80. We considered the holding in Fuhrmann as dispositive in State v. Horn, 282 N.W.2d 717, 732 (Iowa 1979), where a defendant challenged a life sentence without the possibility of parole as cruel and unusual based on the fact that he was twenty years old at the time of the offense. We have also upheld mandatory prison terms in the face of cruel and unusual punishment challenges in a variety of other contexts. See State v. Phillips, 610 N.W.2d 840, 843-44 (Iowa 2000) (holding ten-year mandatory sentence for second-degree robbery does not rise to cruel and unusual punishment); August, 589 N.W.2d at 744 (finding forty-two-and-one-half-year mandatory, consecutive sentence for kidnapping in the second-degree and first-degree robbery not cruel and unusual); State v. Lara, 580 N.W.2d 783, 786 (Iowa 1998) (finding mandatory minimum sentence of over twenty-one years for first-degree robbery permissible).