Bobby Ray Washington v. State of Iowa

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 24-1589
Filed February 25, 2026
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Bobby Ray Washington,
Applicant–Appellant,
v.
State of Iowa,
Respondent–Appellee.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County,
The Honorable Scott D. Rosenberg, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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Karmen Anderson, Des Moines, attorney for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Nicholas E. Siefert, 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.

As part of a global plea deal encompassing criminal charges in eight
cases, Bobby Washington thought that he would receive a suspended
sentence with probation. Instead, the district court sentenced him to prison.

Washington applied for postconviction relief in two of his cases:
FECR320578 and FECR359644. After a hearing in May 2024, the court
denied Washington relief. Washington appeals. Because Washington’s
claims on appeal involve constitutional challenges, our review is de novo.
Sothman v. State, 967 N.W.2d 512, 522 (Iowa 2021).

***

In FECR320578, Washington pleaded guilty to second-degree theft in
March 2019. He received a suspended prison sentence with probation, which
he violated in 2020 and again in 2022. Two of the violations in 2022 were
from new charges that Washington picked up in February and May.
Washington also missed a sentencing hearing in March and was charged with
a felony failure to appear in FECR359644.

To resolve these and other cases, Washington stipulated to the
probation violations in FECR320578 and pleaded guilty to the failure-to-
appear charge in FECR359644. The parties jointly recommended suspended
sentences and probation in all of Washington’s cases. The written guilty plea
notified Washington that the district court was “not bound by the plea
agreement and may give [him] the maximum sentence allowed by law.”
Washington waived his right to a delay between his pleas and sentencing,
along with his right to be present for those hearings. The court rejected the
parties’ plea agreement and sentenced Washington to prison in July 2022.

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A few days later, Washington filed a pro se motion in arrest of judgment
in the failure-to-appear case, asserting: “I was to get probation on the charges
not prison and that is what my attorney said to me.” The district court
refused to consider that motion—and others filed by Washington himself—
because he was still represented by attorney Jeremy Feitelson.

In December 2022, Feitelson withdrew from Washington’s cases.
Soon after Feitelson’s withdrawal, Washington applied for postconviction
relief. An amended application alleged that Feitelson was ineffective in both
cases for, among other things, failing to file “post-sentencing motions.”
Washington also alleged that he was actually innocent of the failure-to-appear
charge in FECR359644 because he “was ill with COVID 19” when he missed
the sentencing hearing.

The district court denied these claims, confining Washington’s
ineffective-assistance claim to the probation revocation proceedings in
FECR320758. On that claim, the court found “no specific post-judgment
motions have been identified by Washington that would have been
appropriate and would have changed the outcome of the probation revocation
hearing.” As for the actual-innocence claim in FECR359644, the court found
that “[o]ther than his own testimony, Washington provided no proof in
support of his claim.”

***

On appeal, Washington asserts the district court erred in failing to find
his counsel ineffective for not filing “post-judgment motions on his behalf.”
Washington’s arguments in support of that claim all relate to the failure-to-
appear charge in FECR359644. But the court only addressed the ineffective-
assistance claim as it related to the probation revocation proceedings in

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FECR320758. “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.” Lamasters v. State, 821 N.W.2d 856, 862 (Iowa 2012)
(citation omitted). Although Washington could have preserved error by
asking the court to expand its ruling to the other case, he failed to do so. See
id. (“When a district court fails to rule on an issue properly raised by a party,
the party who raised the issue must file a motion requesting a ruling in order
to preserve error for appeal.” (citation omitted)). We accordingly agree with
the State that because the court did not rule “on the same issue now raised
on appeal, error was not preserved.”

Even if Washington had preserved error, we would find that he did not
meet his burden to prove counsel was ineffective. See Smith v. State, 7 N.W.3d
723, 726 (Iowa 2024) (noting that to establish an ineffective-assistance claim,
the defendant must prove “both that counsel breached an essential duty and
that constitutional prejudice resulted”). Washington failed—both in the
district court proceedings and on appeal—to identify what “post-judgment
motions” counsel should have filed on his behalf or to explain how those
unidentified motions would have changed the outcome of the proceedings.
“When complaining about the adequacy of an attorney’s representation, it is
not enough to simply claim that counsel should have done a better job.”
Dunbar v. State, 515 N.W.2d 12, 15 (Iowa 1994). Instead, the postconviction
relief applicant “must state the specific ways in which counsel’s performance
was inadequate and identify how competent representation would have
changed the outcome.” Id. Because Washington failed to do so, we affirm
the district court’s denial of his ineffective-assistance claim.

Washington also failed to prove his claim of actual innocence. To
succeed with that claim, Washington needed to prove “by clear and

4
convincing evidence that, despite the evidence of guilt supporting the
conviction, no reasonable fact finder could convict the applicant of the crimes
for which the sentencing court found the applicant guilty in light of all the
evidence.” Schmidt v. State, 909 N.W.2d 778, 797 (Iowa 2018).

In contending that he met this high burden, Washington relies on his
testimony at the postconviction relief hearing that the failure to appear was
“due to COVID illness and that he contacted the Clerk of Court to inform
them of his illness.” He argues that because the district court did not
expressly find his testimony unreliable, “the court should have given it
significant weight.” We disagree. While the court may not have expressly
found Washington was not credible, it was certainly implied from its
reasoning that “Feitelson was unaware of the defense Washington now
asserts at the time of his guilty plea to the [failure-to-appear] charge. It would
be highly unlikely that counsel would have ignored any such defense claim.”
Giving weight to that implied credibility finding, Sothman, 967 N.W.2d at
522, we reach the same conclusion on our de novo review of the record.

***

For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s ruling denying
Washington postconviction relief.

AFFIRMED.

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