State of Iowa v. Marsalis Tavoris Jones

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-2013
Filed January 23, 2025

STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

MARSALIS TAVORIS JONES,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County, Andrew Chappell,

Judge.

A defendant appeals his conviction for felony domestic abuse assault.

AFFIRMED.

Gregory F. Greiner, West Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Kevin Cmelik, Special Counsel, for

appellee.

Considered by Tabor, C.J., and Ahlers and Sandy, JJ.
2

TABOR, Chief Judge.

“[I]f there was ever a classic he said/she said case, that was it.” This post-

trial observation summarized the district court’s view of the competing evidence

presented by the prosecution and defendant Marsalis Jones. In so observing, the

district court aptly noted that the jury was free to credit the victim’s testimony and

reject the version of events offered by Jones. On appeal, Jones challenges both

the sufficiency and the weight of the evidence supporting his conviction for

domestic abuse assault, third or subsequent offense. Finding no error in the

court’s denial of Jones’s motion for judgment of acquittal and no abuse of

discretion in its refusal to grant a new trial, we affirm.

I. Facts and Prior Proceedings

C.S. was spending the Fourth of July 2023 watching Guardians of the

Galaxy and eating Happy Joe’s pizza with her two children when Jones knocked

on their door. Jones was the children’s father, and he wanted to spend time with

them. The parents didn’t have a formal custody arrangement, and Jones would

often show up for visitation without calling. This time, C.S. told Jones he would

have to wait because they were finishing their meal. Jones agreed to wait in his

car. But twenty minutes later, he knocked again, agitated over the delay. When

C.S. told him they weren’t done yet, he cursed and said he should be able to come

into her house. Jones then took out his anger on C.S.’s trash cans, knocking them

over and kicking the trash around the sidewalk and driveway.

C.S. responded by yelling at him to leave and threatening to call the police.

As C.S. started to pick up the trash, Jones “came over and spit on [her].” In her

words, “He like hacked a loogie and just spit on me.” She testified that it landed in
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her “front area” and some in her hair and “it was disgusting.” To express her

frustration, she kicked his car.1 Her actions “enraged” Jones, who then “attacked”

her. She recalled that “he was coming after me” and put his hands up in a boxing

stance. She tried to push past him to go back into the house, but he punched her

two or three times in the chest. C.S. called the police, but Jones left before officers

arrived. She told an officer that Jones spit on her shirt and it was “still gross.” She

also said that Jones struck her once in the shoulder and once in the chest. 2 The

officer verified that she had a red mark on her shoulder.

Jones told a slightly different story. He testified that he called ahead about

visiting the children but received no response and did not leave a message. In his

version, it was C.S. who “got irate” when he rang the doorbell a second time. He

recalled that they were both cursing and acknowledged kicking over the garbage

cans at the curb. According to Jones, C.S. then jumped onto his car and “tried to

rip the headlight out the front passenger side.” He remembered asking her “why

[are] you acting crazy?” And then she scratched his arm and started hitting him in

the face. He claimed that after she threw her last punch, he bit down on his tongue

and spit on the ground. He acknowledged spitting in her direction but denied

“trying to spit on her.” He also denied striking her but said that he “tried to get her

off me by pushing her away.” After that, he figured “there’s no reasoning with her,

so [he] just left.”

1
In her deposition, C.S. denied touching Jones’s car. She explained at trial that
she lied about it because she felt like she “was expected by authorities to react a
different way than [she] did.”
2 As trial exhibits, the State offered photographs C.S. had taken of her chest

depicting slight bruising.
4

The State charged Jones with domestic abuse assault, third or subsequent

offense, a class “D” felony under Iowa Code sections 708.2A(1) and

708.2A(4) (2023). At his trial, the jury heard from C.S., an investigating officer,

and Jones. While cross-examining C.S., defense counsel asked her about text

messages she sent Jones in March 2023, threatening to tell the police “your

license plates number and that you have drugs on you.” C.S. acknowledged

sending the text but denied calling the police. She said she made the threat

because she thought he had stolen something from her.

After about two and one-half hours of deliberation, the jury returned a guilty

verdict on the single count of domestic abuse assault. Jones did not contest the

State’s allegation that he had four prior domestic abuse assault convictions.

Before sentencing, Jones moved for a new trial, alleging the verdict was

against the weight of the evidence. The court denied that motion and sentenced

Jones to an indeterminate five-year prison term. Jones appeals, challenging the

guilty verdict in two ways: (1) as not based on substantial evidence and (2) as

against the weight of the evidence.

II. Scope and Standards of Review

On Jones’s sufficiency claim, we review for correction of legal error. State

v. Lee, 6 N.W.3d 703, 706 (Iowa 2024). We are bound by the verdict if substantial

evidence supports it. Id. The evidence is substantial if it could convince a rational

factfinder that Jones was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. See id. In deciding

whether the State offered substantial evidence, we view the record in the light most

favorable to the verdict; that review encompasses all legitimate inferences and

presumptions reasonably deduced from the evidence. Id. at 706–07.
5

On his weight-of-the-evidence claim, we take a different tack. We do not

approach the evidence from a standpoint favorable to the verdict, nor do we

assume the truth of the evidence offered by the prosecution. See State v. Taylor,

689 N.W.2d 116, 134 (Iowa 2004). But we do review the district court’s denial of

Jones’s motion for new trial for an abuse of discretion. State v. Krogmann, 998

N.W.2d 141, 150 (Iowa 2023). To emphasize, we do not ourselves determine

whether the verdict is contrary to the weight of the evidence; we only decide

whether the district court abused its considerable discretion in denying the motion.

State v. Stendrup, 983 N.W.2d 231, 246 (Iowa 2022). We reverse under this

“deferential standard” only if the district court’s ruling looms as a “clear and

manifest abuse of discretion.” Id. (citing State v. Neiderbach, 837 N.W.2d 180,

216 (Iowa 2013)).

III. Analysis

A. Sufficiency of the Evidence

In Jones’s domestic abuse assault prosecution, the court instructed the jury

on these elements:

1. On or about July 4, 2023, [Jones] either did an act which
was intended to cause pain or injury to [C.S.], or result in physical
contact which was insulting or offensive to [C.S.]; or did an act which
was intended to place [C.S.] in fear of immediate physical contact
which would have been painful, injurious, insulting or offensive to her.
2. [Jones] had the apparent ability to do the act.
3. The act occurred between persons who are the parents of
the same minor child.

The court also defined specific intent as “not only being aware of doing an act and

doing it voluntarily,” but also “doing it with a specific purpose in mind.”
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Jones contests only the first element. He argues that the State did not prove

that he acted with the specific intent to assault C.S. He points to inconsistencies

in C.S.’s statements. For example, she told the responding officer that Jones hit

her once in the arm and once in the chest, but she testified that he hit her two or

three times in the chest. He likewise parses C.S.’s initial description of Jones’s

spit landing on her shirt, but her failure to mention to the officer that it also hit her

hair. Overall, he claims that she had a “propensity to fabricate” as shown by her

text threat to “make a false report against him for possessing drugs.”

In considering sufficiency questions, we view the evidence in the light most

favorable to the prosecution and are “highly deferential to the jury’s verdict.” See

State v. Slaughter, 3 N.W.3d 540, 546 (Iowa 2024) (citation omitted). We take this

hands-off approach in recognition that jurors are free to believe any testimony they

choose and give differing versions of an incident appropriate weight. See State v.

Thornton, 498 N.W.2d 670, 673 (Iowa 1993) (explaining “the very function of the

jury is to sort out the evidence and ‘place credibility where it belongs’” (citation

omitted)). Any minor inconsistencies in C.S.’s statements—especially given

Jones’s overall corroboration of the event—do not defeat the guilty verdict. See

State v. Hildreth, 582 N.W.2d 167, 170 (Iowa 1998).

B. Weight of the Evidence

On top of moving for judgment of acquittal, Jones sought a new trial,

contending the jury’s guilty verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence. See

Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.24(2)(b)(7); State v. Ellis, 578 N.W.2d 655, 659 (Iowa 1998).

Rule 2.24(2)(b)(7) is a safety valve, allowing courts to grant a new trial to avoid a

miscarriage of justice when the evidence preponderates heavily against the
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verdict. Stendrup, 983 N.W.2d at 246. Courts intervene only when the jurors have

ignored critical evidence in their fact-finding process. State v. Grant, 722 N.W.2d

645, 649 (Iowa 2006). In other words, this remedy is reserved for exceptional

circumstances. State v. Ary, 877 N.W.2d 686, 705 (Iowa 2016).

In considering Jones’s new-trial motion, the court recognized that “this is a

case that certainly could have gone in a direction that would have been more

favorable to you, Mr. Jones, than it did. It did not.” The court stressed that the jury

was free to credit C.S.’s “version of events, which was largely corroborated.” From

there, the court reasoned that “having listened to the evidence” it could not say

that Jones’s version “was necessarily more credible” than C.S’s testimony. Our

review is limited to considering that exercise of discretion by the district court.

Taylor, 689 N.W.2d at 134. In that limited review, we see no abuse of discretion.

The jury sorted out the competing recollections of the witnesses. The district court

did not find that the jury, in doing so, ignored any critical evidence. At the appellate

level, we find no abuse in the district court’s assessment of the weight of the

evidence. This case does not present an extraordinary situation where the verdict

is a miscarriage of justice. Thus, we decline to reverse Jones’s conviction.

AFFIRMED.