Bobby Joe Morris v. State of Iowa

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-1040
Filed May 22, 2024

BOBBY JOE MORRIS,
Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________

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

Judge.

An applicant appeals the dismissal of his application for postconviction

relief. AFFIRMED.

Raya Dimitrova of Carr Law Firm, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Considered by Greer, P.J., and Schumacher and Ahlers, JJ.
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SCHUMACHER, Judge.

Bobby Morris appeals the district court’s dismissal of his fourth application

for postconviction relief (PCR). Morris asserts he received an illegal sentence and

alleges actual innocence based on newly-discovered evidence. The district court

granted summary disposition for the State, finding Morris’s application was barred

by the three-year statute of limitations.

I. Background Facts and Prior Proceedings

In 1998, Morris was convicted of first-degree murder and received a life

sentence. This court affirmed his conviction and laid out the facts on appeal:

From the evidence presented at trial, the jury could find the
following facts. On December 31, 1997, victim Kelsey Bitting and
her two-year-old daughter, Taylor, moved into the Des Moines
apartment of Kelsey’s mother, Claudia O’Conner. This move was
necessitated because Ms. Bitting’s husband, Bobby Joe Morris, had
beaten her up.
The murder took place late in the evening of January 2, 1998.
That night, Bitting, Taylor, and a friend of Ms. O’Conner’s, Mike
Caster, were with Ms. O’Conner at her apartment. Sometime late
that evening, Morris came to the apartment and knocked on the door,
asking to come in. No one allowed Morris to enter the apartment. A
“conversation” ensued between Bitting and Morris through the door,
which consisted of Morris cussing and screaming at Bitting. The
argument apparently centered on Morris’s belief she had told police
about his drug trafficking, which had resulted in a search of his
apartment earlier the same day. During this argument, Morris told
Bitting “she going (sic) to be sorry, that he couldn’t help her now.
There was going to be a drive-by, and she had better get out of the
house.” Morris then left the apartment building. After watching
Morris go out the front of the building, Bitting and Morris argued
through an open window. O’Conner asked them to stop, because
she was fearful she would be evicted.
Because of trouble with Morris before, Bitting had been
instructed to call the police if there were any further problems.
Unfortunately, Bitting’s mother did not have a phone in her
apartment. It was then decided everybody would leave in Caster’s
1973 Chevy Blazer, call the police, and take Bitting to another
friend’s house. Caster and Bitting went down one set of stairs, and
O’Conner and Taylor went down another set. Once Caster and
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Bitting arrived at the Blazer, Morris and an unknown female
approached them. Bitting said to Caster “Oh, my God, there’s
Bobby.” Morris told the female “that’s her.” As Caster was fumbling
with the keys, Morris said “See, Kelsey, I told you what would
happen.” Morris’s female companion, whom Caster later identified
in a police photo lineup as Courtney Burnett Nelson, raised a gun
and started firing, at which time Caster went down to the floorboard.
Bitting also tried to get on the floorboard, but the console and
gearshift of the Blazer impeded her path. Bitting then screamed her
last words: “Bobby, no. No, Bobby. No, please.” Caster heard
Morris’s voice coming from the driver’s side of the Blazer, then heard
two shots fired. After Caster heard a vehicle leaving the scene, he
ran and got help. The victim’s mother also saw Morris on the driver’s
side of the truck, heard a “pop,” and saw the flash of the gun.

State v. Morris, No. 98-1640, 2000 WL 381641, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 12, 2000).

Since his conviction, Morris has filed four applications for PCR, the instant

appeal being his fourth. In his fourth application, Morris asserts that he received

an illegal sentence and alleges actual innocence. The State moved for summary

disposition, asserting Morris’s PCR application was barred by the three-year

statute of limitations. The court granted that motion and dismissed Morris’s

application for relief. Morris appeals.

II. Standard of Review

“Our review in [PCR] proceedings is for correction of errors at law.” Manning

v. State, 654 N.W.2d 555, 558–59 (Iowa 2002).

III. Analysis

Morris asserts that the district court wrongly dismissed his application for

PCR. He argues the statute of limitations does not apply to his illegal sentence

claim and because a ground of fact exists that could not be raised before, it is not

applicable to his claim of actual innocence. As part of his argument, he asserts
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the district court should have granted him additional time to conduct discovery and

establish proof of the new ground of fact.

The district court granted the State’s motion for summary disposition. “[T]he

principles underlying summary judgment procedure apply to motions of either party

for disposition of an application for [PCR] without a trial on the merits.” Id. at 560.

Summary disposition “is only proper when there is no genuine issue of material

fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” Id. And “[t]he

moving party has the burden of showing the nonexistence of a material fact and

the court is to consider all materials available to it in the light most favorable to the

party opposing [the motion].” Id. There is a genuine issue of material fact when

reasonable minds could reach different conclusions from the undisputed facts. Id.

A. Illegal Sentence

Morris claims his sentence constitutes cruel and unusual punishment under

the Eighth Amendment and violates the due process provisions of the Iowa and

United States Constitutions.

Challenges to an illegal sentence are allowed to be raised at any time.

Tindell v. State, 629 N.W.2d 357, 359 (Iowa 2001). But Morris has already raised

this challenge in a previous PCR. Morris v. State, No. 18-1021, 2019 WL 3714820,

at *1, *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 7, 2019). Because the “[r]elitigation of previously

adjudicated issues is barred” under Iowa Code section 822.8 (2023), Morris’s

challenge is also barred. See State v. Wetzel, 192 N.W.2d 762, 764 (Iowa 1971);

Iowa Code § 822.8.
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B. Claim of Actual Innocence Based on Newly-Discovered Evidence

Morris’s application also claims that newly-discovered evidence contained

in a police file “will show that he is actually innocent of the crime.” And that “[t]he

evidence will show . . . witness Mike Caster was not telling the truth and destroyed

material evidence that proves the Applicant’s innocence.”

Under Iowa Code section 822.3, an application for PCR “must be filed within

three years from the date the conviction or decision is final or, in the event of an

appeal, from the date the writ of procedendo is issued.” Iowa Code § 822.3. This

three-year statute of limitations is avoidable in some cases. “[T]o avoid the three-

year statute of limitations contained in section 822.3, an applicant must show he

or she could not have raised the ground of fact within the applicable time period.”

Schmidt v. State, 909 N.W.2d 778, 798 (Iowa 2018). But the ground of fact raised

must be relevant to the conviction. Id. “[A] ground of fact is ‘relevant’ if it is the

type of fact ‘that has the potential to qualify as material evidence for purposes of a

substantive claim under section 822.2.’” Id. at 798–99 (quoting Harrington v. State,

659 N.W.2d 509, 521 (Iowa 2003)). This framework is relevant to Morris’s actual

innocence claim. “The new-ground-of-fact analysis is a component of a claim of

actual innocence based upon alleged newly discovered evidence found after the

three-year limitations period, and the ground-of-fact exception only overcomes the

statute of limitations if it could not have been raised within the limitations period.”

Quinn v. State, 954 N.W.2d 75, 77 (Iowa Ct. App. 2020).

There is no question the three-year statute of limitations has expired. The

district court dismissed this claim after finding “Morris has conducted no discovery

as to what he claims is evidence demonstrating that a witness . . . destroyed
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material evidence.” Morris fails to show newly-discovered evidence and asks for

additional time for discovery. The district court denied additional time for

discovery, and “[t]he decision to deny or grant a continuance of a motion for

summary judgment to pursue discovery lies within the discretion of the trial court.”

Iowa Farm Bureau Fed’n v. Env’t Prot. Comm’n, 850 N.W.2d 403, 409 (Iowa 2014).

“We review a decision to deny discovery by the district court for abuse of

discretion.” Id. It has been over twenty years since Morris was convicted. He has

been through a trial, appeal, PCR, a second PCR, a third PCR, and now his fourth

PCR. He has had two decades to conduct discovery. We determine there is no

abuse of discretion by the district court in denying additional time for discovery.

And Morris’s assertion that he might find something in a police file is not

sufficient to constitute a new ground of fact. This is because “an applicant must

show he or she could not have raised the ground of fact within the applicable time

period,” Schmidt, 909 N.W.2d at 798, and because “the applicant must also show

a nexus between the asserted ground of fact and the challenged conviction.”

Harrington, 659 N.W.2d at 520. Morris’s broad claims of evidence tucked away in

a police file do not provide any footing for relief here as he has not explained why

he could not have raised this before nor how it is relevant. See Schmidt, 909

N.W.2d at 798; Harrington, 659 N.W.2d at 520.

In Morris’s third PCR action, Morris asserted “prosecutorial misconduct for

failing to provide exculpatory evidence related to statements made by [Mike]

Caster.”1 Morris, 2019 WL 3714820, at *1 n.1. In this appeal, Morris asserts “Mike

1Morris’s previous PCR action incorrectly referred to Mike Caster as “James
Caster.”
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Caster . . . was not telling the truth and that evidence of Caster’s false statements

will prove Appellant’s innocence.” Morris’s broad assertions do not explain how

the statements in this PCR action are different from the statements in his last PCR

action, nor do they explain why they could not have been raised before. “[T]o avoid

the three-year statute of limitations contained in section 822.3, an applicant must

show he or she could not have raised the ground of fact within the applicable time

period.” Schmidt, 909 N.W.2d at 798. Morris has failed to do that.

IV. Conclusion

Morris’s assertion of an illegal sentence was litigated in his previous PCR

action and his claim of actual innocence does not avoid the three-year statute of

limitations in Iowa Code section 822.3. Accordingly, we affirm.

AFFIRMED.