Court Opinion

ID: 9577461
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:35:10.195687+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:20:38.328881
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent from the result reached by the majority because I feel there was substantial compliance with the principles laid down in State v. Sisco, 169 N.W.2d 542 (Iowa 1969). It is the majority, not the trial court, which retreats from the Sisco rule by sacrificing substance for form and by exacting from trial courts the very thing Sisco said was not intended — a ritualistic reverence for formalism.
As I read the majority opinion, it says there would have been a sufficient factual basis if defendant had said, “I wrote a check knowing that I had no funds in the bank and intending to obtain money I was not entitled to.” (See reference to State v. Taylor, 211 N.W.2d at 265, in majority opinion.)
I cannot distinguish between that and what happened here. It is tweedledum or tweedledee. The trial court read the charge to defendant. It alleged in substance defendant had drawn a check on a designated bank with fraudulent intent to obtain money thereby, knowing he had no funds in the bank. In response to an inquiry from the court, defendant said he had done the very acts he was charged with.
I have read and re-read the information and I am unable to find the “technical language” or the “verbiage” which is said might “confound” or “confuse” one not versed in the law. No one could read the information and reach any conclusion except that he was charged with passing a worthless check. It is impossible to make *621anything more difficult than that out of the plain and direct language used.
To say otherwise is to distort the plain meaning and the announced purpose of Sisco.
I would affirm.
MOORE, C. J., and REES, J., join in this dissent.