Court Opinion

ID: 9676726
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 05:31:11.45003+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:50.533221
License: Public Domain

NEUMAN, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the result because I agree our decision in Tomquist compels that we vacate Harrington’s sentence and remand for resentencing. But I differ with the majority’s analysis concerning false imprisonment as a sexually predatory offense. Having correctly recognized that false imprisonment is not the same as attempt to commit kidnapping, the majority concludes it constitutes an attempted violation of chapter 709 (sexual abuse). I respectfully disagree.
The enhanced sentencing provisions of Iowa Code section 901A.2 plainly require conviction of an offense defined in section 901 A. 1 as sexually predatory before the enhancement applies. All we have here is a jury’s interrogatory answer pertinent to a conviction nowhere included in section 901A.1. The crime of false imprisonment for which Harrington stands convicted may well have been sexually motivated, as the jury found. But the crime has not thereby been transformed into a sex abuse conviction under chapter 709, nor does it otherwise meet the statutory definition of sexually predatory offense.
LAVORATO and SNELL, JJ., join this concurrence in part and dissent in part.