Terry Ray Lord v. State of Iowa

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-0065
Filed January 23, 2025

TERRY RAY LORD,
Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Paul D. Scott, Judge.

An applicant for postconviction relief appeals the dismissal of his application

as time-barred. AFFIRMED.

Sonia M. Elossais of Carr Law Firm, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Linda J. Hines, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Considered by Greer, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.
2

LANGHOLZ, Judge.

More than forty years ago, Terry Lord was convicted of first-degree murder

after raping a woman and then cutting her throat and stabbing her. See State v.

Lord, 341 N.W.2d 741, 741 (Iowa 1983). Despite a three-year statute of limitations

for seeking postconviction relief that ran for him in July 1987,1 Lord filed this

application for postconviction relief in July 2023, summarily challenging his

conviction and sentence on various grounds. See Iowa Code § 822.3 (2023). The

district court dismissed his application as time-barred.

Lord appeals, urging us to overrule our supreme court’s precedent that the

statute of limitations is constitutional. See Davis v. State, 443 N.W.2d 707, 708–11

(Iowa 1989). He argues that it should be revisited in light of the United States

Supreme Court’s reasoning interpreting the Second Amendment in New York

State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022).

But it is questionable whether Lord has preserved any specific constitutional

challenge for appellate review. His briefing in resistance to the motion to dismiss,

while citing the reasoning of Bruen, did not argue that the statute of limitations

violates any specific constitutional provision. See Meier v. Senecaut, 641 N.W.2d

532, 537 (Iowa 2002) (“It is a fundamental doctrine of appellate review that issues

must ordinarily be both raised and decided by the district court before we will

decide them on appeal.”). And the only specific challenge that that he has arguably

sufficiently briefed on appeal—based on the federal Due Process Clause—was

1 Lord’s conviction became final before the enactment of the three-year statute of

limitations, so he had to seek postconviction relief within three years of the statute’s
July 1, 1984 effective date. See Brewer v. Iowa Dist. Ct., 395 N.W.2d 841, 844
(Iowa 1986).
3

already rejected by our supreme court.2 See Davis, 443 N.W.2d at 710–11. So

even if this challenge is preserved for appellate review, it fails because we cannot

overrule our supreme court based on Lord’s arguments. See State v. Beck, 854

N.W.2d 56, 64 (Iowa Ct. App. 2014) (“We are not at liberty to overrule controlling

supreme court precedent.”).

Seeing no legal error, see Thongvanh v. State, 938 N.W.2d 2, 8

(Iowa 2020), we thus affirm the district court’s dismissal of Lord’s application for

postconviction relief as barred by the statute of limitations.

AFFIRMED.

2 Lord makes scattered references to other state and federal constitutional
provisions in his appellate brief. To the extent that he was attempting to raise
separate challenges to the statute of limitations, he has not fleshed out such
challenges with sufficient argument to enable our consideration or supported them
with citations to authorities, so those challenges are waived. See Iowa R. App.
P. 6.903(2)(a)(8)(3); Soo Line R.R. Co. v. Iowa Dep’t of Transp., 521 N.W.2d 685,
691 (Iowa 1994).