Court Opinion

ID: 9678886
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 06:34:58.529416+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:17:08.656927
License: Public Domain

SCHULTZ, Justice
(dissenting).
Contrary to the majority, I do not believe Meier was substantially prejudiced by his attorney’s misadvice. Assuming without deciding that misadvice as to collateral consequences of a plea is ineffective assistance of counsel, the law also requires a defendant to show prejudice in order to set his plea aside. State v. Hrbek, 336 N.W.2d 431, 436 (Iowa 1983); Henderson v. Scurr, 313 N.W.2d 522, 524 (Iowa 1981). The petitioner in the present case, unlike the defendant in Strader, was not given any false hope of an earlier release from prison. See also, State v. Boone, 298 N.W.2d 335, 338 (Iowa 1980) (incorrect statements by the court prior to defendant’s guilty plea falsely gave defendant hope that he might be eligible for probation or a deferred sentence). His only complaint is that he might not have pled guilty to the lessor charge in order to avoid the minimum sentence if he had been told the minimum sentence could possibly be reduced by good time. While the contingency of possible good time reduction, in retrospect, may have lessened somewhat the value of the bargain he struck, clearly it did not make the petitioner worse off than he otherwise would have been without the bargain. There is not even a hint of evidence that petitioner could have obtained a better result. His attorney, an experienced trial lawyer who has handled over 1000 felony cases and 100 trials, testified that petitioner had no chance to prevail in a jury trial on the issue of culpability and that the best deal was to take the plea bargain.
From my own evaluation of the totality of the circumstances presented here, I find it doubtful that petitioner’s trial counsel’s performance was below the range of normal competency. See, i.e., Cerame v. State, 584 S.W.2d 174, 177-78 (Mo.App.1978) (defense counsel’s ignorance of statute providing for special parole term of additional five years for drug offenders and his failure to so inform defendant prior to guilty plea did not amount to ineffective assistance of counsel); State v. Haer, 20 Wash.App. 306, 309-10, 578 P.2d 1339, 1341 (1978) (erroneous pre-plea advice by counsel that defendant would be subject to enhanced penalty provision on each of the four counts he faced and thus be required to serve four minimum terms did not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel even though defendant only could be subjected to one minimum mandatory term). Even if petitioner did receive ineffective assistance of counsel, *209he has not shown that prejudice resulted therefrom. Accordingly, I would affirm the district court’s denial of postconviction relief.
HARRIS and CARTER, JJ., join this dissent.