Court Opinion

ID: 9727247
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 13:27:40.195182+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:25:35.468705
License: Public Domain

CARTER, J.
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent.
At the outset, I note this is the first time that this statute has come before us on the enhanced degree-of-guilt issue that we now face. For this reason, I submit that we should not be deterred from writing our analysis of this legislation on a clean slate, unencumbered by the interpretive baggage coming out of our opinions construing the habitual-offender statutes. It is evident that the only sustainable ground for upholding the interpretation we have placed on those statutes is the doctrine of stare decisis. However, resort to those decisions in seeking to interpret the legislation before us must necessarily be by way of analogy. Stare decisis should not force us to invoke by analogy flawed interpretations of other statutes not now before us.
The relevant language of the statute now before us states:
A person who commits a violation of this subsection and has previously been convicted two or more times of violating this chapter or chapter 124A, 124B, or 453B is guilty of a class “D” felony.
Iowa Code § 124.401(5). The meaning of these words is crystal clear. They convey the message that, if a person who has violated subsection (5) of 124.401 has previously been convicted two or more times of violating chapter 124 or other designated chapters containing controlled-substance offenses, that person is guilty of a class “D” felony. There is absolutely nothing contained in the statutory language requiring that the prior convictions be in any particular order with respect to time of perpetration and time of conviction.
The primary purpose of statutory interpretation is to reveal legislative intent. State v. McCoy, 618 N.W.2d 324, 325 (Iowa 2000). A court gleans this intent from the words used by the legislature. State v. Johnson, 630 N.W.2d 583, 586 (Iowa 2001); State v. Kidd, 562 N.W.2d 764, 765 (Iowa 1997). We are not allowed to speculate as to probable legislative intent apart from the words used in the statute. Johnson, 630 N.W.2d at 586; State v. Adams, 554 N.W.2d 686, 689 (Iowa 1996). We have said that we will not “read something into the law that is not apparent from the words chosen by the legislature.” State v. Guzman-Juarez, 591 N.W.2d 1, 2 (Iowa 1999). To read into the statute a qualification that has not been recognized by the legislature is to engage in judicial legislation.
In a three-offense sequence, the order of commission and conviction for the first two offenses is of scant importance in fixing culpability for a third offense. Assuming that the legislative purpose is to increase punishment for those who have not responded to prior judicial sanctions, that goal is met any time an enhanced degree of guilt is imposed on a third offense committed after conviction of two prior offenses. The order of the first two offenses inter se is simply irrelevant in that consideration. Moreover, we should also recognize that the notion of failure to respond to sanctions is not the only consideration involved in recidivist sentencing. The circumstance of having committed multiple offenses provides a valid reason for legislative enlargement of the degree of guilt on a third or subsequent offense, irrespective *293of considerations involving résponse to sanctions.
If we are to consider our habitual-offender decisions, we should recognize that the path therein taken has been an errant one. Prior to State v. Hollins, 310 N.W.2d 216 (Iowa 1981), the Conley case and other cases that following it interpreted a habitual-offender law that required not only two prior convictions but also two prior sentences of imprisonment. This court in those cases interpreted the words “twice convicted of crime, sentenced, and committed to prison” to envision a fixed sequence of offense, conviction, sentence, and imprisonment followed by a second sequence of offense, conviction, sentence, and imprisonment.
The result reached in Conley does not appear to have been required by the wording of the statute then in effect. More important, however, is the fact that any reason to continue that approach disappeared when a new habitual-offender law took effect on July 1, 1978. 1976 Iowa Acts ch. 1245(3), § 208 (effective January 1, 1978). That law, referred to in the majority opinion, provided “[a]n habitual offender is any person convicted of a class ‘C’ or class ‘D’ felony, who has twice before been convicted of any felony....” Iowa Code § 902.8 (1981). The language of this statute left no room for an interpretation imposing the conditions that Conley had fostered. Moreover, we have recognized that a material modification of a statute gives rise to a presumption that a change in the law was intended. State v. Truesdell, 679 N.W.2d 611, 617 (Iowa 2004); Midwest Auto. 111 LLC v. Iowa Dep’t of Transp., 646 N.W.2d 417, 425 (Iowa 2002). This presumption is enhanced when the amendment follows a contrary judicial interpretation of the prior statute. Truesdell, 679 N.W.2d at 617.
Hollins was decided after this amendment. Rather than adhering to this settled rule of interpretation and recognizing that the legislature intended to reverse the result in Conley and its progeny, Hollins continued to require that each prior offense must be complete as to both perpetration and conviction before the commission of the next in order to produce an enlarged punishment for a third offense. That was a misreading of the legislative intent accompanying the changes that had been made in the law.
We should not go where our interpretations of the habitual-offender statutes appear to lead in interpreting Iowa Code section 124.401(5). Rather, we should interpret that statute in a manner consistent with its plain meaning and affirm the judgment of the district court.
LARSON, J., joins this dissent.