Court Opinion

ID: 9654293
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 18:13:30.793711+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:13:07.707616
License: Public Domain

WIGGINS, Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent. The only evidence of the defendant’s intent to deliver is the officers’ discovery of eight separate bags of methamphetamine coupled with the officers’ opinion testimony about the purpose of individually wrapped bags. Officer Wagner best expressed the basis of the officers’ opinion. He testified:
I don’t see any reason why a user of methamphetamine would want to go through the hassle of individually packaging all their methamphetamine in small quantities of approximately half-gram to a little more — to one of them being a teener, one-sixteenth of an ounce of methamphetamine. It wouldn’t be common practice for a user of methamphetamine to divide the methamphetamine into separate packaging like that.
The officers did not find packaging materials, scales, large amounts of cash, or pay/owe sheets in the residence. Although the officers did find an address book containing the names of two persons known to them as manufacturers and distributors of methamphetamine, the officers did not find anything that could be construed as a customer list. Additionally, in the same tin as the methamphetamine, the officers found drug paraphernalia used to consume methamphetamine, not to sell it. Finally, the officers conceded the quantity of drugs found did not exceed that which might be acquired for personal use.
Contrary to the officers’ testimony, there are many reasons, consistent with personal use explaining why the methamphetamine was packaged separately. First, the defendant may have bought the drugs in eight different packages. Second, the defendant may have bought the methamphetamine in one package and repackaged the drugs, planning to take just enough to use at one time. Third, personal use makes perfect sense when the individually packaged drugs were found in the same tin as the device to use the drugs.
“[Ijntent, being a mere act of the mind ... is usually established by appropriate inference and presumptions from the overt acts proved.” Hall v. Wright, 261 Iowa 758, 771-72, 156 N.W.2d 661, 669 (1968). Without any additional evidence of intent, the finder of fact would have to speculate whether the packaging indicated the defendant had the intent to sell the methamphetamine. Under this record, it is just as likely that the packaging indicated the defendant intended to use the methamphetamine for personal use. Accordingly, I believe finding eight packages of methamphetamine, in small quantities consistent with personal use, in the same container as paraphernalia used to consume these drugs, without any other evidence is insuf*650ficient to support a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt for possession with intent to deliver methamphetamine. I would reverse the conviction.
TERNUS, C.J., joins this dissent.