State of Iowa v. Terrance Martice Miller

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 24-2001
Filed January 7, 2026
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State of Iowa,
Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
Terrance Martice Miller,
Defendant–Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Linn County,
The Honorable Lars G. Anderson, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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Des C. Leehey, Cedar Rapids, attorney for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Martha E. Trout, Assistant Attorney
General, attorneys for appellee.
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Considered without oral argument
by Schumacher, P.J., and Badding and Langholz, JJ.
Opinion by Badding, J.

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BADDING, Judge.

This appeal presents a wrinkle that has rarely been addressed in our
sentencing case law: what happens when a district court’s oral
pronouncement of a defendant’s mandatory sentence is illegal but the
sentence in the written judgment entry is correct?

Terrance Miller appeals the sentences imposed in two criminal cases
involving three convictions and forty-five counts of contempt. The district
court ran Miller’s sentences concurrently with one another, resulting in a
total term not to exceed ten years in prison. The court also orally pronounced
that those sentences would be “concurrent with the federal sentence” he was
serving when his crime was committed. But in its written judgment entry,
the court ordered the sentences to run consecutively to the federal sentence.

Without mentioning the oral pronouncement, Miller argues the court
erred in finding that Iowa Code section 901.8 (2024) required consecutive
sentencing. The State disagrees, correctly arguing that Miller’s argument is
foreclosed by our supreme court’s decision in State v. Jones, 298
N.W.2d 296, 298 (Iowa 1980). Recognizing the discrepancy between the
court’s oral and written sentences, the State argues the oral pronouncement
of concurrent sentences “constitutes an illegal sentence,” but the “written
sentence imposes the only correct sentence and it should stand.”

We agree with the State. The sentence announced by the district court
at the sentencing hearing was illegal and void. But because the written
judgment entry correctly imposed consecutive sentences—which were
mandatory under section 901.8—we affirm.

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I. Background Facts and Proceedings

After violently attacking his child’s mother, Terrance Miller sent her a
series of text messages threatening further harm. The State charged him with
domestic abuse assault by strangulation causing bodily injury and first-degree
harassment. While awaiting trial, Miller called the victim dozens of times
from jail, urging her to “drop the charges” and recant her statements to
police. Based on those calls, the State charged Miller with witness
tampering. It also asked the court to hold Miller in contempt for violating his
criminal no-contact order. A jury convicted Miller on the assault and
harassment charges, and the district court found him guilty of forty-five
counts of contempt. Miller later pled guilty to the witness-tampering
charges.

The court held a combined sentencing hearing on Miller’s multiple
convictions and contempts. Pursuant to a plea agreement, both parties asked
the court to impose a ten-year prison term for Miller’s witness-tampering
conviction, to run concurrently with the lesser terms imposed for the other
offenses. The court accepted that joint recommendation and sentenced
Miller to concurrent indeterminate terms of ten years for witness tampering,
five years for domestic abuse, and two years for harassment, along with 336
days in jail for his no-contact violations.

However, a dispute arose at sentencing about whether Miller’s new
sentences should run concurrently or consecutively with a term of federal
supervised release Miller was serving when he committed his state offenses.
According to a presentence investigation report, Miller was not expected to
discharge from federal supervision until December 2025. The report also
noted that Miller “went on escape from the Davenport Residential Facility”
in January 2024. The State alleged that Miller remained on escape status at

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the time of his crimes, and so it urged the court to treat his new prison terms
as consecutive under Iowa Code section 901.8. Miller disputed that
interpretation of the statute, asking the court to run his state sentences
concurrently with his federal one. In what both parties suggest was slip of
tongue, the district court concluded:
I do believe based on my review of Iowa Code section 901.8 and the Kincaid
case that I referred to earlier, that I am required under Iowa law to run . . .
the criminal sentences concurrent with the federal sentence that Mr. Miller
is serving and am ordering the same.

(Emphasis added.) The court later entered a written order sentencing Miller
to concurrent state prison terms that would “run consecutively to the
Defendant’s federal sentence.” Miller appeals this aspect of his sentence.

II. Standard of Review

We review illegal-sentencing challenges, questions of statutory
interpretation, and claimed discrepancies between an oral sentence and
written judgment entry for the correction of errors at law. See Anderson v.
Iowa Dist. Ct., 989 N.W.2d 179, 181 (Iowa 2023); State v. Hess, 533
N.W.2d 525, 527 (Iowa 1995).

III. Analysis

Whether to treat a new sentence as concurrent or consecutive is
typically a decision within the sentencing court’s discretion. State v. Jones,
299 N.W.2d 679, 682–83 (Iowa 1980). However, our legislature has limited
that discretion in cases where “a person is sentenced for . . . a crime
committed while confined in a detention facility or penal institution.”1 Iowa

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Section 901.8 also limits the district court’s discretion where the defendant “is
sentenced for escape under section 719.4.” Although the State alleges Miller was a

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Code § 901.8. In that circumstance, “the sentencing judge shall order the
sentence to begin at the expiration of any existing sentence.” Id.

The Iowa Supreme Court has interpreted the words “any existing
sentence” to mean “any sentence the [defendant] was under at the time
he . . . committed a crime while confined.” Jones, 299 N.W.2d at 682. It has
also held that “the word ‘confined’ in section 901.8 means ‘committed.’”
Jones, 298 N.W.2d at 298. In other words, the statute may apply even when
a defendant’s new offense did not occur inside the walls of a detention facility
or penal institution. See id. at 298–99 (finding that section 901.8 required a
consecutive sentence where the defendant perpetrated a robbery while on
escape from a state penitentiary); State v. Knipe, 349 N.W.2d 770, 772 (Iowa
1984) (holding “a crime committed while on furlough from a state
corrections workcamp is a crime committed while confined” (cleaned up)).

Miller does not deny that he had escaped from a residential facility
where he was serving a term of federal supervision when he committed his
new state offenses.2 See State v. Kincaid, 07-1129, 2008 WL 2746477, at *1–2
(Iowa Ct. App. July 16, 2008) (finding that a crime “committed while on day
programming” through a judicial district residential facility “was ‘a crime
committed while confined in a detention facility or penal institution’”
(quoting Iowa Code § 901.8)). Rather, he argues that his status did not
constitute “confinement” under section 908.1. Miller advocates for a literal
interpretation of that term, contending “the Jones ruling now stands in
contradiction to more recent precedent.” He dedicates most of his appellate

fugitive at the time he committed his new offenses, his sentences were not for the crime
of escape. So that statutory prong is not at issue.
2
We also note that Miller committed his witness-tampering offense while confined
in jail on the assault and harassment charges.

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brief to explaining why Jones’s definition must be abandoned. But as an
intermediate court of appeals, we “are [not] at liberty to anticipatorily
overrule [the supreme] court’s precedent.” Bomgaars v. State, 967
N.W.2d 41, 48 n.4 (Iowa 2021).

Under Jones, the mandatory sentencing provision of section 901.8
applied here. The district court’s written judgment entry correctly ordered
Miller’s state sentences to “run consecutively to the Defendant’s federal
sentence.” The problem is that at the sentencing hearing, the court ordered
the sentences to be “concurrent with the federal sentence that Mr. Miller is
serving.” Because that was not permitted by section 901.8, the court’s oral
sentencing pronouncement was illegal. See Hess, 533 N.W.2d at 527 (“When
a court imposes a sentence which statutory law does not permit, the sentence
is illegal.”); see also Iowa Ct. R. 2.24(5)(b) (“An illegal sentence is a sentence
that could not have been lawfully imposed for the defendant’s conviction or
convictions.”).

Usually, “where there is a discrepancy between the oral
pronouncement of sentence and the written judgment and commitment, the
oral pronouncement of sentence controls.” Hess, 533 N.W.2d at 528 (citation
omitted). And if a “judgment entry incorrectly differs from the oral rendition
of the judgment merely as a result of clerical error,” the supreme court has
held “that the proper remedy is for the district court to correct the written
judgment entry by issuing a nunc pro tunc order.” Id. at 527–29. But—as we
asked at the beginning of this opinion—what happens when the oral
pronouncement is illegal and the written judgment entry is correct?

The court in State v. Shilinsky considered a similar issue. 81 N.W.2d
444 (Iowa 1957). In that case, the district court orally sentenced the
defendant to a term in the county jail. Id. at 448. Two days later, the court

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recalled the defendant and sentenced him to an indeterminate term in prison.
Id. In addressing the defendant’s complaint that the district court lacked
jurisdiction to impose the second sentence, the court held the first sentence
imposing jail time “had no validity” and did not prevent “a later proper
sentence” because “it did not accord with the sentence provided by the Iowa
statute for the offense of which the defendant was convicted.” Id.

This makes sense because, as the court in Shilinsky recognized, an
illegal sentence is void. Id. at 449; see also State v. Ohnmacht, 342 N.W.2d
838, 842 (Iowa 1983) (“A sentence not permitted by statute is void.”). “Void
sentences are not subject to the usual concepts of waiver, whether from a
failure to seek review or other omissions of error preservation.” Ohnmacht,
342 N.W.2d at 843. “Because an illegal sentence is void, it can be corrected
at any time.” State v. Woody, 613 N.W.2d 215, 217 (Iowa 2000); see also Iowa
R. Crim. P. 2.24(5)(a). Thus, in Shilinsky, the court stated that a void
“sentence may be superseded by a new sentence in conformity to the
provisions of the statute.” 81 N.W. at 449 (citation omitted). So even though
the court’s oral pronouncement “imposed an illegal and void sentence, it
ha[d] the power to substitute for it at a later time a legal sentence.” Id.
(citation omitted); see also Ohnmacht, 342 N.W.2d at 842 (“When the
sentencing judge departed from the legislatively mandated sentence, the
pronouncement became a nullity.”).

For these reasons, we agree with the State that the district court’s
written judgment entry imposing the mandatory consecutive sentence under
Iowa Code section 901.8 “is a valid sentence and should stand.”

AFFIRMED.

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