Court Opinion

ID: 9819326
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 06:22:44.592913+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:11:34.508583
License: Public Domain

PRESIDING JUSTICE LYTTON, specially concurring: I specially concur with the majority because the trial court’s actions indicate that it did not exercise its discretion in accepting or refusing the plea. The dissent claims that we should not disturb the trial court’s exercise of its discretion, but this claim assumes that the court had exercised its discretion in the first place. When a judge draws a strict time fine after which he will not accept a guilty plea, it is an arbitrary, not a discretionary, act. As the Hager court said, “a fixed plea deadline is the very antithesis of discretionary decision making.” State v. Hager, 630 N.W.2d 828, 836 (Iowa 2001). If the trial judge had listened to the terms of the plea and refused it on the merits, he would have been exercising his discretion. Because the court refused to hear the plea, we owe it no deference on this issue.