Court Opinion

ID: 9730650
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 15:19:35.348483+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:26:08.303924
License: Public Domain

LeGRAND, Justice
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I concur in the result because under the rationale of State v. Johnson, 291 N.W.2d 6 (Iowa 1980), the trial court should have submitted as included offenses both assault while participating in a felony and aggravated assault.
However, I dissent from Division I dealing with the cross-examination of Darren Dooms, who participated with defendant in commission of the crime. Dooms was promised leniency in return for his testimony. He was to plead to an aggravated misdemeanor carrying a maximum two-year penalty. First-degree sexual abuse is punishable by a life sentence. The trial court restricted cross-examination in only one respect: counsel was not allowed to show the crime for which defendant was being tried carried a life sentence.
The extent of cross-examination lies largely within trial court’s discretion. We reverse only when it is abused. While it might be argued defendant should have been permitted to show the penalty involved, I cannot agree refusal to do so was an abuse of discretion. I think the case is similar to State v. Armenio, 256 N.W.2d 228, 230 (Iowa 1977), where we held there was non-prejudicial error in excluding evidence of the penalty for first-degree murder because it was “unrealistic to suggest the jury would not be aware that the penalty for first-degree murder is most severe.” It is equally “unrealistic” to suppose the jury in the present case did not know the penalty for first-degree sexual abuse — forcible rape — was “most severe.”
Another reason making reversal on this ground improper is counsel’s failure to cross-examine Dooms on this point except in a most cursory manner. There was no real attempt to establish bias, although the defense was foreclosed on only one point— the penalty. In view of counsel’s disinterest in pressing this subject, I believe it is error to permit him now to say defendant was deprived of a fair trial on that ground.
REYNOLDSON, C. J., and McGIVERIN and SCHULTZ, JJ., join this concurrence in part and dissent in part.