Court Opinion

ID: 9859905
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 22:57:04.512431+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:09:44.359751
License: Public Domain

CARTER, Justice
(dissenting).
I dissent.
There should be a limit as to how far a court must go in not acceptmg as true that which all others know to be true. This defendant was charged with four counts of delivery of cocaine and four counts of failing to affix a drug tax stamp to the controlled *518substance. The latter four charges each assert a violation of Iowa Code section 453B.3 (1995). The four drug stamp violations relate to the substances involved in each of the four separate delivery charges. The defendant pleaded guilty to three of the delivery charges and admitted to the presentence investigator that he was guilty of the fourth.
This court accepts the fact that the sentencing judge could consider the fact that defendant had also committed the fourth delivery violation because he admitted this to the presentence investigator. But, it holds that the sentencing judge could not consider the concession made to the defendant in dismissing the four tax stamp charges (all class “D” felonies), which the sentencing judge declared “would probably be easily provable.”
It is common knowledge that drug traffickers do not advertise their activities by buying the drug tax stamp mandated by section 453B.3. The unlikelihood that the tax was paid and the stamps affixed in these four instances is so great as to render defendant’s guilt of these four felonies virtually certain. I submit that the district court did not act improperly in concluding that the charges would probably be easily provable. I would not disturb defendant’s sentence.