STATE OF IOWA, Appellee, vs. WAYLON JAMES BROWN, Appellant.
No. 22–0324
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA
Submitted September 14, 2023—Filed October 20, 2023
Christensen, C.J.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, James N. Daane, Judge.
The defendant seeks further review of a court of appeals decision affirming his convictions for first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury.
DECISION OF COURT OF APPEALS AND DISTRICT COURT JUDGMENT AFFIRMED.
Christensen, C.J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which all justices joined.
Martha J. Lucey, State Appellate Defender, and Ashley Stewart, Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Kyle Hanson, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.
CHRISTENSEN, Chief Justice.
The defendant was convicted of first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury for his role in the baseball bat attack of a man outside his apartment complex, where a surveillance camera captured some of the attack. The defendant argues there was insufficient evidence to support his robbery conviction and that the district court should have merged his convictions. He also challenges the district court‘s denial of his motion for a mistrial based on trial delays resulting largely from COVID-19-related juror absences. The court of appeals rejected the defendant‘s arguments and affirmed his convictions.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings.
Jeremiah Jensen was walking back to his apartment complex from a nearby gas station around 4:30 a.m. on October 20, 2021, when Waylon Brown approached him to talk about an incident from two weeks earlier involving Brown‘s girlfriend. Jensen told Brown, “I don‘t care. I got my own problems,” and kept walking. Brown replied, “What?” which led Jensen to reiterate, “I don‘t care. I got my own problems.” Brown responded, “Get him, Tommy,” and Thomas White charged at Jensen from one of the nearby cars with a baseball bat in hand.
Jensen “[t]ook off running to get to the front door” of the apartment building, where he knew there was a surveillance camera, as Brown and White chased him. Before he could get inside, Brown shoved Jensen from behind causing Jensen to fall against the door. White then struck Jensen two times in the back of the head with the bat. Jensen heard Brown telling White to take Jensen‘s backpack, which White eventually took along with Jensen‘s cell phone before leaving.
Jensen left a trail of blood as he struggled to reach his apartment, where his girlfriend and cousin found him and called 911. When the 911 dispatcher asked if Jensen knew the people who assaulted him, Jensen declared that Brown and White did it. Paramedics transported Jensen to a hospital, where he received thirteen staples on his head to close his wounds.
Detective Nathan West of the Sioux City Police Department investigated the attack, which included reviewing the apartment‘s surveillance video. Although the surveillance video did not show all of the events because of the camera‘s placement, it contains around thirty-eight seconds of the attack and allowed Detective West to retrieve still shots of the men involved. The video shows Jensen running to the apartment building with Brown following close behind. White then enters the frame with a baseball bat in his right hand. Jensen and Brown leave the frame as they reach the building‘s door, but the video continues to show White slow his pace as he grips the bat with both hands. Brown reappears on the screen as White draws the bat back, and the pair surge forward as White swings the bat twice. The video does not show what the bat makes contact with, though the pair remain on screen and Brown‘s mouth appears to be moving. Shortly thereafter, Brown and White back up, pause, bend, straighten, and move out of the camera‘s view. Brown quickly reappears, stepping backward before heading away from the building. White starts to
Detective West presented Brown with still shots from the video and asked whether he knew the men pictured. Brown initially identified White but denied being the other individual pictured. After Detective West showed Brown a clearer image of the video, Brown identified himself and claimed that he was trying to help Jensen by pushing White off of him.
Brown then changed his story, claiming he was sitting outside when he saw Jensen and White run by and heard White yell, “Hey, stop him! He took my shit!” Brown admitted shoving Jensen near the door, but said it was only to help White retrieve his belongings. He denied seeing White with a baseball bat or telling him to take Jensen‘s backpack.
The State charged Brown with first-degree robbery under
Brown called White to testify as a witness, but White exercised his Fifth Amendment right and refused to answer most questions. This prompted Brown to offer into evidence a handwritten affidavit that White had signed with his version of events, which states:
I was in the alley when I saw [Jensen] with my backpack. He saw me and started running. I saw someone sitting outside the [apartment complex] so I hollered to stop him, “He has my backpack.” So [Brown] stopped him at the door. Then that‘s when I assaulted [Jensen]. [Brown] had nothing to do with it. [Brown] dropped his cigarettes and lighter. I caught up with [Brown] to ask for a cigarette. Then that‘s when [Brown] asked me, ‘What was all that about?’ I told him. Then he gave a cigarette to me and said to be careful out there and went on his way. [Brown] had nothing to do with this.1
Additionally, Brown testified in his own defense, offering this version of events that he claimed occurred as he saw two men running while sitting outside the apartment complex:
I heard one yell at the other and he said something about my bag. “Hey, he took my bag.” So me -- I don‘t know, I just reacted to it and I ran. And I saw one guy running, he was wearing all black, and I saw one guy in a white shirt. I wasn‘t sure what he had. I didn‘t know if he had anything, a weapon or not, so I ran and caught him at the door. I pushed him at the door and stopped him, and from there, then, everything else happened too quick, like, I walked away.
The jury found Brown guilty of first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury. The district court sentenced him to serve consecutive terms of incarceration of twenty-five years on the robbery charge and ten years on the willful injury charge. Brown filed a timely appeal, which we transferred to the court of appeals. The court of appeals affirmed his convictions, and we granted his application for further review.
II. Standard of Review.
We review Brown‘s challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence for the correction
III. Analysis.
Brown presents three issues on appeal. First, he contends there was insufficient evidence to prove he committed robbery in the first or second degree as the principal or aider or abettor. Second, he argues the district court erred in failing to merge his convictions for first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury. Third, he maintains the district court abused its discretion when it denied his motion for a mistrial based on trial delays stemming from juror absence.
A. Sufficiency of the Evidence. Brown asserts there was insufficient evidence to show he committed robbery in the first or second degree as the principal or aider or abettor based on two elements of the crime. Specifically, Brown claims the evidence was insufficient to show he had the intent to rob Jensen or the knowledge that White was armed with a dangerous weapon. We disagree on both fronts, especially viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State. See Mong, 988 N.W.2d at 312.
Jensen‘s testimony provided sufficient evidence of Brown‘s intent to rob him. This included his testimony that Brown initiated the attack by yelling for White to “[g]et him,” and how he heard Brown “telling [White] to take [his] backpack.” “[I]t is the jury‘s function to determine the credibility of a witness,” State v. Dudley, 856 N.W.2d 668, 677 (Iowa 2014), and the jury exercised this function appropriately when it decided Jensen‘s testimony was more credible than the version of events offered in White‘s affidavit or Brown‘s testimony.
Moreover, the jury instructions did not require a finding that Brown knew White was armed with a dangerous weapon despite Brown‘s claim. It merely required the jury to find that Brown “aided and abetted” White, “who was armed with a dangerous weapon.” Because Brown never objected to this instruction, it became “the law of the case for purposes of our review of the record for sufficiency of the evidence.” State v. Canal, 773 N.W.2d 528, 530 (Iowa 2009).
The State provided the jury with the surveillance video of the incident, which shows Brown chasing after Jensen with White close behind clearly carrying a baseball bat before he used it to hit Jensen twice. This is certainly sufficient to support the jury‘s conclusion that Brown “aided and abetted Thomas White, who was armed with a dangerous weapon.” Given White‘s obvious display of the bat, we also find this evidence sufficient even if the jury was instructed that the State needed to show Brown had knowledge that White was armed with a dangerous weapon. Accordingly, we affirm Brown‘s conviction for first-degree robbery.
“The legislature defines the offenses and can provide for multiple punishments for separate offenses that apply to the same conduct.” State v. Johnson, 950 N.W.2d 21, 24 (Iowa 2020) (citing Gamble v. United States, 139 S. Ct. 1960, 1965 (2019)). If the legislature intended for there to be multiple punishments, then the Double Jeopardy Clause is not violated,
1. The legal-elements test. Our first step is “to apply the legal-elements test that compares ‘the elements of the two offenses to determine whether it is possible to commit the greater offense without also committing the lesser offense.’ ” Johnson, 950 N.W.2d at 24 (quoting Halliburton, 539 N.W.2d at 344). If “a statute provides alternative ways of committing the offense, the alternative submitted to the jury controls.” State v. Anderson, 565 N.W.2d 340, 344 (Iowa 1997) (citing State v. Steens, 464 N.W.2d 874, 875 (Iowa 1991)).
The elements of Brown‘s first-degree robbery charge were marshaled to the jury as follows:
- On or about October 20, 2021, . . . [Brown]:
- had the specific intent to commit a theft.; and/or
- aided and abetted Thomas White, who had the specific intent to commit a theft, and [Brown] aided and abetted Thomas White with the knowledge that Thomas White had such specific intent.
- To carry out his intention or to assist him in escaping from the scene, with or without the stolen property, [Brown] aided and abetted Thomas White who committed an assault upon Jeremiah Jensen . . . .
- [Brown] aided and abetted Thomas White who was armed with a dangerous weapon.
(It is not necessary that all jurors agree to just “a” or “b” in numbered paragraph 1 in this instruction. It is only necessary that all jurors agree to at least one of the two alternatives.)
The elements of Brown‘s willful injury causing serious injury charge were marshaled to the jury as follows:
- On or about the 10th day of October, 2021, [Brown] aided and abetted Thomas White who hit Jeremiah Jensen in the head with a baseball bat.
- [Brown] aided and abetted Thomas White who specifically intended to cause a serious injury to Jeremiah Jensen.
- [Brown] aided and abetted Thomas White whose acts caused a serious injury to Jeremiah Jensen . . . .
Brown recognizes that on the surface the elements of the two charges are not identical. Nonetheless, Brown contends that it is impossible for the elements
When comparing the instructions provided to the jury, Brown‘s convictions do not satisfy the legal-elements test. There are additional elements of willful injury causing serious injury—primarily the serious injury—that are not present in the elements for first-degree robbery under the dangerous-weapon alternative.
This means that one can commit first-degree robbery without also committing willful injury causing serious injury. For example, one can display a firearm during a robbery without intending to cause or actually causing a serious injury. Thus, merger is not required here because the willful injury causing serious injury conviction requires proof of an additional element that first-degree robbery does not. See Bloom, 983 N.W.2d at 51 (citing State v. McKettrick, 480 N.W.2d 52, 57 (Iowa 1992)).
This conclusion is not inconsistent with our prior merger cases. In State v. Hickman, 623 N.W.2d 847, 852 (Iowa 2001) (en banc), we held that first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury merge because “it is impossible to commit first-degree robbery under the purposely-inflicts-serious-injury alternative without also committing willful injury.” (Emphasis added.) Relying on Hickman, in State v. Bloom, 983 N.W.2d at 50, we held that Bloom‘s conviction for willful injury causing serious injury merged with his first-degree robbery conviction. However, Bloom was charged with first-degree robbery in violation of
Based on the alternatives presented in Hickman and Bloom, when the respective defendants committed first-degree robbery, they necessarily committed
willful injury causing serious injury. See Bloom, 983 N.W.2d at 50 (“[I]t is impossible to commit first-degree robbery under the purposely-inflicts-serious-injury alternative without also committing willful injury.” (quoting Hickman, 623 N.W.2d at 852)). The same is not true here. A defendant who commits first-degree robbery under the dangerous-weapon alternative does not necessarily also commit willful injury causing serious injury. That is because there are elements for willful injury causing serious injury that are not encompassed within the elements for first-degree robbery under the dangerous-weapon alternative. Therefore, the legal-elements test is not satisfied.
Aside from the legal-elements test, when discerning legislative intent, we consider the available punishments for each offense. State v. Bullock, 638 N.W.2d 728, 731–32 (Iowa 2002) (citing Halliburton, 539 N.W.2d at 344) (“Legislative intent is indicated, in part, by whether the crimes at issue meet the legal elements test for lesser-included offenses.“); see also State v. Goodson, 958 N.W.2d 791, 804 (Iowa 2021). Specifically, if “the greater offense has a penalty
that is not in excess of the lesser included offense, [then] a legislative intent to permit multiple punishments arises. Otherwise, there would be little point to the greater offense.” Goodson, 958 N.W.2d at 804 (quoting State v. West, 924 N.W.2d 502, 511 (Iowa 2019)).
We also look to whether the sentence for the lesser offense can be enhanced by prior convictions for the same offense. See id. at 805 (“Since an enhanced sexual abuse conviction would carry the same or greater punishment as a first-degree burglary conviction, there may ‘never be a reason to charge a defendant with the greater offense’ when the offender has committed a prior sexual abuse offense. Meaning the legislature must have intended double punishment.” (citations omitted) (quoting West, 924 N.W.2d at 511)); Roby, 951 N.W.2d at 465 (“Moreover, unlike the OWI statute, the speeding statute lacks subsequent-offense enhancements.“); Johnson, 950 N.W.2d at 25–26 (determining that because “merger would eliminate the subsequent-offense enhancements for marijuana possession,” the legislature did not intend for the crimes to merge).
Finally, we examine the dangers the legislature intended to prevent when enacting the statutes at issue. See Roby, 951 N.W.2d at 465 (“Here, the lesser included offense is not OWI, but speeding. Eluding while speeding and speeding both involve a driver exceeding the posted speed limit and thereby endangering others.“); Johnson, 950 N.W.2d at 26–27 (“Another reason we decline to merge these offenses is that eluding and drug possession statutes address distinct dangers.“); Halliburton, 539 N.W.2d at 344–45 (“Thus, these sections focus on different dangers; section 724.3 is aimed at a class of particularly harmful weapons, whereas section 724.26 is aimed at a group of potentially harmful persons.“).
Here, first-degree robbery is a class “B” felony, punishable by up to twenty-five years in prison, at least half of which must be served prior to being eligible for parole.
serious injury is a class “C” felony, punishable by up to ten years in prison and a fine of between $1,370 and $13,660.
Willful injury causing serious injury is subject to enhancement, which provides for a minimum prison sentence of three years and a maximum of fifteen years.
When attempting to discern the dangers the legislature intended to protect against by enacting the statutes for first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury, we look to the language of the statutes themselves. Under
A person commits an assault when, without justification, the person does any of the following:
(a) Any act which is intended to cause pain or injury to, or which is intended to result in physical contact which will be insulting or offensive to another . . . .
(b) Any act which is intended to place another in fear of immediate physical contact which will be painful, injurious, insulting, or offensive . . . .
(c) Intentionally points any firearm toward another, or displays in a threatening manner any dangerous weapon toward another.
A person is guilty of willful injury if the person commits “an act . . . which is intended to cause serious injury to another.”
However, one can commit an assault without actually inflicting a physical injury. See
There are additional elements of first-degree robbery that are not present in willful injury causing serious injury, and there are elements of willful injury causing serious injury that are not present in first-degree robbery. Thus, the legal-elements test is not satisfied. Additionally, the different purposes served by the robbery and
Accordingly, we affirm Brown‘s sentences for first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury.
C. District Court‘s Denial of a Mistrial. Brown maintains the district court abused its discretion by denying his motion for a mistrial based on trial delays resulting from juror absences. This requires a summary of the trial timeline, beginning with the commencement of Brown‘s jury trial on Wednesday, January 19, 2022. After voir dire, the district court made a record of a discussion it had with the parties off the record about how they selected twenty-four jurors for voir dire, leaving them without alternative jurors. It noted, “counsel both agreed that rather than try to amend our process in some way that would end up with additional alternates, counsel agreed we should keep the jury we had and drive on.” Counsel for both sides confirmed on the record that they consented to having no alternative jurors. That same day, the parties presented their evidence and rested their cases.
A juror failed to appear the next day and was unreachable, prompting Brown to move for a mistrial based on the juror‘s absence. The district court denied this request and the additional mistrial request that Brown renewed afterward. Because Brown declined to waive his right to a twelve-person jury panel and the parties had agreed in advance that they would not amend the voir dire process to allow for alternative jurors, the district court asked the other jurors about their availability for the next day. Two reported conflicts, so the district court continued the trial until Monday, January 24. In the meantime, the juror who failed to appear reported to the district court and explained that he had overslept. The district court allowed the parties to voir dire the juror to ensure he could remain impartial. In denying Brown‘s motion for mistrial, the district court explained,
I was convinced that -- as [the State] said, that [the juror‘s] remorse was genuine and that he is otherwise an earnest young man, and I think we all saw [that] yesterday both during voir dire and with his assistance with our technical issues. I also sensed my observations of the remaining jury that there didn‘t appear to be anybody who was upset with having to come back on Monday morning. They were relieved that they weren‘t forced to come back today or tomorrow and, if anything, they were all happy that they were going to be coming back on Monday, so I didn‘t sense that there was going to be anybody there that‘s going to hold anybody accountable for [the juror‘s] mistake this morning.
When Monday arrived, a different juror was ill. The district court postponed the trial another day before learning Tuesday morning that the ill juror tested positive for COVID-19. In accordance with CDC guidelines at the time, the district court ordered a five-day recess to allow that juror to quarantine before the trial reconvened on Monday, January 28.
Brown asserts that the district court should have granted his motion for mistrial based on these delays, declaring he “should not have had to choose between waiting 9 days for a full 12-jury panel or waiving his right to a 12-jury panel.” Brown speculates that this delay violated his right to a fair trial in at least three ways: (1) it is “plausible” that the jurors “could have . . . forgotten” pertinent evidence that “likely adversely impacted Brown and resulted in a biased result” while they “were exposed to outside influences, life circumstances, work, family, and other obligations“; (2) it is “very conceivable
of improper jury influence based on objective facts instead of mere speculation), overruled on other grounds by State v. Hanes, 790 N.W.2d 545 (Iowa 2010).
In fact, there have been cases with longer breaks during the trial than Brown‘s that did not result in a mistrial. In State v. Lowder, 129 N.W.2d 11, 15–16 (Iowa 1964), we rejected the defendant‘s claim that he did not receive a fair and impartial trial based on the district court‘s continuance of his trial for a month to give his new counsel an opportunity to prepare after the jury trial had started and received testimony from two witnesses. We also have the guidance of other courts nationwide that have denied mistrials based on COVID-19-related midtrial delays. See, e.g., United States v. Coversup, No. 20–30266, 2022 WL 2207309, at *1 (9th Cir. June 21, 2022) (affirming the denial of a mistrial based upon the trial court‘s grant of a two-week recess to test and quarantine jurors in accordance with then-prevailing CDC protocols); People v. Breceda, 290 Cal. Rptr. 3d 899, 914–23 (Ct. App. 2022) (holding mistrial was unnecessary when the trial was suspended for seventy-three days during the state‘s presentation of its case-in-chief due to the pandemic in mid-2020). Those include United States v. Frazier, 625 F. Supp. 3d 752, 754 (M.D. Tenn. 2022), which involved numerous recesses and a three-week shutdown in the middle of one witness‘s testimony to prevent the spread of COVID-19 among trial participants. In denying a mistrial, the United States District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee addressed many of the same claims that Brown now makes in arguing the district court should have granted his motion for a mistrial. Id. at 755–58. For example, the court acknowledged that “breaks in a trial increase the risk that some outside influence will come to bear on a juror,” but went on to explain that there was “no basis or reason to suspect that any one or more of them was untruthful when they answered in the negative.” Id. at 755. That same conclusion applies here.
Similarly, it rejected the same assertion that Brown makes now that the delays may have caused jurors to forget pertinent evidence, explaining, “the same argument could have been made . . . in any lengthy trial for that matter. No doubt, the jurors’ recollection of earlier testimony may not be as clear as their remembrance of more recent testimony but that is not a basis for a mistrial.” Id.; see also United States v. Smith, 44 F.3d 1259, 1268 (4th Cir. 1995) (“Inherent in the presentation of any trial lasting a period of days or months is the difficulty caused by the passage of time. As events move further to the past they may be lost through the foibles of memory or they may become fixed as an accepted reality, depending on the impression of the event.“). Notably, this was not a complex case, as both sides were able to present their cases on the same day and the jurors had video evidence of the event in question. It ultimately boiled down to whose version of events the jury found more credible, so we struggle to believe Brown‘s speculation that jurors might have forgotten pertinent evidence due to the delay.
“[A] mistrial is a drastic remedy that results in additional expense to the
The district court appropriately “balanced the rights of defendants and public safety” by following the CDC protocol at the time and allowing the trial to proceed safely with minimal delay. State v. Basquin, 970 N.W.2d 643, 654 (Iowa
2022) (explaining how our court used its inherent powers during the COVID-19 pandemic to temporarily allow written guilty pleas to felonies). Nothing in the record indicates that Brown was prejudiced by this delay, especially given the district court‘s remarks that it “would be unlikely to change the bond requirement” to change Brown‘s incarceration status even if it declared a mistrial. Accordingly, we affirm the district court‘s denial of Brown‘s motion for a mistrial.
IV. Conclusion.
For these reasons, we affirm Brown‘s conviction for first-degree robbery, his sentences for first-degree robbery and willful injury causing serious injury, and the district court‘s denial of his motion for a mistrial.
DECISION OF COURT OF APPEALS AND DISTRICT COURT JUDGMENT AFFIRMED.