Court Opinion

ID: 9858387
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 16:21:21.713207+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:54:05.162789
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent. We recognized in State v. Woosley, 240 N.W.2d 651, 653 (Iowa 1976) that the court is not required to inform a defendant of a mandatory sentence as a condition precedent to acceptance of a guilty plea. An inescapable consequence of that holding is a possibility that a defendant may in fact believe that there is a possibility of probation where none exists. Conversely, it is also possible that there was in fact no misunderstanding on defendant’s part.
On the present record, I find no action of the trial court from which it may be determined on direct appeal that defendant was in fact mislead in this regard. I believe that under such circumstances he must offer proof that he was mislead in order to be entitled to relief from the judgment. Absent such a showing on the record in a direct appeal, our disposition should be to affirm the judgment without prejudice to defendant’s right to raise the issue by means of an application for postconviction relief.
LeGRAND, J., joins in this dissent.