Court Opinion

ID: 9526245
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:14:29.756723+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:19:13.820158
License: Public Domain

McGIVERIN, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion.
I cannot agree with division II and the result reached. The substantive evidence of defendant’s actions toward the victim is insufficient to support a charge of assault with the intent to commit sexual abuse. The majority uses evidence of defendant’s past bad acts to fill the admitted void in the evidence as to defendant’s intent in the present case. Thus, defendant’s conviction would be bottomed on defendant’s past bad acts and not on evidence of his intent in the present case, even though the general rule is that “ ‘one crime cannot be proved by proof of another.’ ” State v. Cott, 283 N.W.2d 324, 326 (Iowa 1979) (quoting State v. Schlak, 253 Iowa 113, 115, 111 N.W.2d 289, 291 (1961)).
In the present case, defendant at most merely grabbed S.O.’s arms. Defendant did not make any sexual comment to S.O. or touch her in a sexual manner. We have previously held that
[an] overt act must reach far enough towards the accomplishment, toward the desired result, to amount to the commencement of the consummation, not. merely preparatory_ [I]t must approach sufficiently near it to stand either as the first or some subsequent step in a direct movement towards the commission of the offense after the preparations are made.
State v. Roby, 194 Iowa 1032, 1043, 188 N.W. 709, 714 (1922). Defendant’s acts in the present case did not go far enough to indicate a plan to engage in sexual activity with S.O.
The evidentiary record clearly supports a charge of assault, but not the one of which defendant was convicted.
SCHULTZ and NEUMAN, JJ., join this dissent.