Court Opinion

ID: 9693593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 16:51:58.226676+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:19:48.817446
License: Public Domain

*398UHLENHOPP, Justice
(concurring specially).
The question in division III of the majority opinion is whether the legislature has evinced an intention that a person convicted of first-offense driving while intoxicated must serve a jail sentence of not less than two days, so that the general progression of sentences in section 901.5 of the Code does not apply. I think it has. Section 321.281 makes the offense a serious misdemeanor; hence the penalty in section 903.1(2) applies: “imprisonment not to exceed one year, or a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars, or both.” But section 321.281 does not stop with making the offense a serious misdemeanor. It contains an additional penalty: “and shall be imprisoned in the county jail for not less than two days . .” This added clause is superfluous if it does not mean what it says. The General Assembly must have had a purpose in amending section 321.281 to insert the clause. It did so in the new criminal code. § 321.281, The Code 1977 Supp. (Coordinating Amendments).
This case contains a vital distinction from State v. Robbins, 257 N.W.2d 63 (Iowa 1977). There the statute, section 321.561, contained only one provision for confinement: “imprisonment in the penitentiary for not more than two years . . . Here the statutes, sections 903.1(2) and 321.281, provide two provisions for confinement: “imprisonment not to exceed one year, or a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars, or both,” and “shall be imprisoned in the county jail [for] not less than two days . . . .”
Apart from a fine, I think a court may not sentence a defendant to more than one year for this offense. For example, a court may sentence a defendant to a one-year jail term with two days to be served and the balance of the year suspended, but may not sentence a defendant to a jail term of one? year and two days, with the'one year suspended and the two days to be served.
I dissent from division III but concur in the rest of the opinion and in the result.
HARRIS and McCORMICK, JJ., join in this special concurrence.