James Alan Christensen v. State of Iowa ( 2020 )

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 18-2164
Filed March 4, 2020
JAMES ALAN CHRISTENSEN,
Applicant-Appellant,
vs.
STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, Jeffrey L.
Poulson, Judge.
James Christensen appeals from the district court’s denial of his second
application for postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.
Alfredo Parrish and Adam Witosky of Parrish Kruidenier Dunn Boles Gribble
Gentry Brown & Bergmann L.L.P., Des Moines, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Sheryl Soich, Assistant Attorney
General, for appellee State.
Considered by Bower, C.J., and May and Greer, JJ.
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GREER, Judge.
James Christensen appeals the district court’s denial of his second
application for postconviction relief (PCR). Christensen argues he is entitled to a
new trial based on newly discovered evidence. We conclude this evidence is
merely cumulative and impeaching and would not have changed the result of the
trial. We affirm the denial of his second PCR application.
I. Background Facts and Proceedings.
The facts underlying Christensen’s 2009 criminal conviction are fully set
forth in our opinion in his direct appeal. See State v. Christensen, No. 09-0961,
2010 WL 4792120, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Nov. 24, 2010). Relevant here,
Christensen was charged with sexual abuse in the second degree by aiding and
abetting based on allegations he helped corner and “comfort” a woman, E.S., while
his friend and coworker John Sickels raped her.1 Christensen and Sickels were
tried together, and a jury found them guilty as charged. Christensen was
sentenced to a term of incarceration not to exceed twenty-five years with a
mandatory seventy percent minimum. His conviction and sentence were affirmed
on direct appeal. Id. at *9–10. His first PCR application was denied, and the denial
was affirmed on appeal in 2016. Christensen v. State, No. 15-0765, 2016 WL
3272213, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. June 15, 2016).
In 2017, Christensen filed this second PCR application based on his
allegations that two items of newly discovered evidence raise concerns about
1 At the time, Christensen was the chief of police in Creston, Iowa, and Sickels was
the assistant chief.
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whether E.S.’s trial testimony was truthful. Christensen argues that if a jury heard
this evidence, the result would have probably been different.
The alleged new evidence is a recorded phone call and some Facebook
posts. First, the recording is of a June 2015 phone call between E.S. and Renee
Hoyt, a woman who became acquainted with E.S. and spoke to her on the phone
three times. At the time of the phone calls, E.S. was staying in a domestic-violence
shelter, having recently fled from her long-term, on-again, off-again boyfriend who
had beaten her. E.S.’s adult son feared for his mother’s safety and asked Hoyt to
speak with his mother because she needed a friend. Sympathetic to Christensen,
Hoyt knew E.S.’s current circumstances and spoke with E.S. under the guise of
friendship. While Hoyt’s stated purpose for the phone calls was to help E.S., Hoyt
knew Christensen’s first PCR application was on appeal and believed E.S. was
lying about the sexual assault. Hoyt brought up the criminal case during at least
two of these calls. Hoyt decided to record the third call to capture what she
believed were E.S.’s inconsistent statements about the assault. During the
recorded call, E.S. accused both Sickels and Christensen of raping her, not just
Sickels, as she had testified at trial. With evidence of this call in hand, Christensen
claims E.S.’s statements during the call contradict her trial testimony and call her
testimony into doubt.
Next, Christensen offered the second pieces of evidence. This exhibit
shows screenshots of E.S.’s Facebook posts, which appear to be from 2016, about
domestic violence perpetrated by her boyfriend. Christensen claims these
Facebook posts establish that, at trial, E.S. would lie about the sex act being
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nonconsensual to avoid upsetting her boyfriend. Christensen asserts the evidence
shows the canard fabricated by E.S.
After a hearing, the district court determined that E.S.’s statements in the
recording were inadmissible hearsay and that Christensen could not show that the
recording and the Facebook posts, taken independently or together, were likely to
change the outcome of the trial. The court denied this second PCR application.
Christensen appeals.
II. Standard of Review.
We review PCR actions based on newly discovered evidence for correction
of errors at law. More v. State, 880 N.W.2d 487, 499 (Iowa 2016). “[W]e will affirm
if the trial court’s findings of fact are supported by substantial evidence and the law
was correctly applied.” Harrington v. State, 659 N.W.2d 509, 520 (Iowa 2003).
III. Analysis.
On appeal, Christensen argues E.S.’s statements made during the phone
call recording are admissible as statements against interest and the recording and
E.S.’s Facebook posts constitute newly discovered evidence. He believes this
evidence requires a new trial. For purposes of this appeal, we assume without
deciding that E.S.’s statements during the phone call are admissible. For that
reason, we will not address the hearsay claim and will only address the newly
discovered evidence claim.
Iowa Code section 822.2(1)(d) (2017) allows “a postconviction-relief
applicant a right of action when ‘[t]here exists evidence of material facts, not
previously presented and heard, that requires a vacation of the conviction or
sentence in the interest of justice.’” Moon v. State, 911 N.W.2d 137, 151 (Iowa
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2018) (quoting Iowa Code § 822.2(1)(d)). To succeed on a claim of newly
discovered evidence, the applicant must show,
(1) that the evidence was discovered after the verdict; (2) that it could
not have been discovered earlier in the exercise of due diligence; (3)
that the evidence is material to the issues in the case and not merely
cumulative or impeaching; and (4) that the evidence probably would
have changed the result of the trial.
Id. (citation omitted). “The standard for whether the evidence probably would have
changed the result of the trial is a high one because of the interest in bringing
finality to criminal litigation.” More, 880 N.W.2d at 499.
Christensen argues he is entitled to a new trial based on the phone call
recording and the Facebook posts. We consider each claim in turn.
A. Phone Call Recording. Even if we assume Christensen has
established the first two prongs,2 Christensen concedes he intends to use E.S.’s
statements made during the phone call to impeach her credibility. Still, he argues
these statements are material to the issues at trial because they directly contradict
her version of events, and had these statements been admitted at trial it would
have been grounds for, at a minimum, a mistrial.
E.S.’s statements in the phone call do not exonerate Christensen but
implicate him as a principal. E.S. never wavered from her testimony that
Christensen tried to soothe her while Sickels raped her, the foundation of
Christensen’s conviction. While she made conflicting statements during the phone
call, she did not recant her trial testimony and insisted she was telling the truth at
trial.
2 The June 2015 call occurred over six years after the jury verdict.
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Apart from E.S.’s testimony, other evidence at trial tended to implicate
Christensen, including his own testimony. During his direct examination,
Christensen denied having touched or comforted E.S. and denied having
witnessed a sex act. On cross-examination, however, he both admitted and
denied that he saw Sickels having sex with E.S. He also acknowledged it was
possible that he may have touched E.S.’s hand and told her, “Don’t worry, this
didn’t happen” when he left.
For all of these reasons, Christensen has not met the high bar of proving
the result probably would have been different had the jury heard this recording.
B. Facebook Posts. Christensen argues that E.S.’s Facebook posts about
domestic violence perpetrated by her boyfriend are evidence of her motivation to
lie at trial regarding consent to sexual intercourse. Christensen concedes these
posts would be used to attack E.S.’s credibility.
While the Facebook posts were created after the jury verdict, Christensen
was aware before trial that E.S.’s boyfriend was abusive. E.S.’s credibility and
motivation to lie to avoid angering her boyfriend were directly at issue in the
criminal trial and were the subject of a pretrial motion in limine. Although the trial
court limited some testimony, the jury heard E.S. testify that she and her boyfriend
sometimes got into “semiphysical confrontations” but she was not afraid of him.
Likewise, E.S.’s boyfriend testified that he and E.S. sometimes had “physical
confrontations” when they had been drinking. And the jury heard from E.S.’s
manager about a time E.S. came to work with a black eye, cuts on her hand, and
bruises on her arms. When the manager asked E.S. how she got the injuries, E.S.
explained her boyfriend had hit her because she was not having enough sex with
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him and thought she was cheating on him. E.S. told the manager during that same
incident her boyfriend had pointed a shotgun at her and smashed a mirror and
window on her van. The manager testified that E.S. was afraid of her boyfriend.
We agree with the district court that “[t]he only thing the posts indicate is
that [E.S.] continued to date and be subjected to physical violence by [her
boyfriend] after the trial.” These Facebook posts are merely cumulative and
impeaching. In any event, Christensen has failed to show that admitting these
Facebook posts probably would have changed the result of the trial. The jury
considered evidence about E.S.’s abusive relationship, rejected the theory that
E.S. had a motivation to lie, and convicted Christensen. The district court did not
err in denying Christensen’s claim on this ground.
IV. Disposition.
For these reasons we affirm the district court’s denial of Christensen’s
application for postconviction relief.
AFFIRMED.