Khamfeung Thongvanh v. State of Iowa


IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA No. 18–0885 Filed January 24, 2020 KHAMFEUNG THONGVANH, Appellant, vs. STATE OF IOWA, Appellee. On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals. Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Webster County, Adria A.D. Kester, Judge. An applicant for postconviction relief seeks further review of a court of appeals decision affirming the dismissal of his application. AFFIRMED. Jamie L. Hunter of Dickey & Campbell Law Firm, PLC, Des Moines, and Andrew J. Smith of Mack, Hansen, Gadd, Armstrong & Brown, P.C., Storm Lake, for appellant. Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney General, Darren Driscoll, County Attorney, and Brad M. McIntyre, Assistant County Attorney, for appellee. 2 WIGGINS, Chief Justice. An applicant sought postconviction relief (PCR), claiming a violation of his constitutional right to an impartial jury drawn from a fair cross section of the community under the United States and Iowa Constitutions. He based his claim on State v. Plain, 898 N.W.2d 801 (Iowa 2017). The district court dismissed his PCR application, and he appealed the order of dismissal. On appeal, we find Plain is a new ground of law allowing an applicant to bring a PCR action after the three-year statute of limitations in Iowa Code section 822.3 (2018) has run. Nonetheless, we affirm the order of dismissal because we find our holding in Plain does not apply retroactively to cases on collateral review. I. Background Facts and Proceedings. A jury convicted Khamfeung Thongvanh of first-degree murder in 1984. He appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed his conviction in 1986. State v. Thongvanh, 398 N.W.2d 182, 184, 189 (Iowa Ct. App. 1986) (en banc). A few years later, he filed a PCR application, raising among other things a fair-cross-section claim. Thongvanh v. State (Thongvanh II), 494 N.W.2d 679, 680, 683 (Iowa 1993). We affirmed the denial of that application in 1993. Id. at 684. On June 30, 2017, we decided Plain, which addressed the Duren three-part test for evaluating Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claims. 898 N.W.2d at 821–28; see Duren v. Missouri, 439 U.S. 357, 364, 367–68, 99 S. Ct. 664, 668, 670 (1979) (laying out test for evaluating Sixth Amendment fair-cross-section claims). Under Duren, the criminal defendant must first establish a prima facie fair-cross-section violation by showing 3 (1) that the group alleged to be excluded is a ‘‘distinctive’’ group in the community; (2) that the representation of this group in venires from which juries are selected is not fair and reasonable in relation to the number of such persons in the community; and (3) that this underrepresentation is due to systematic exclusion of the group in the jury-selection process. Plain, 898 N.W.2d at 822 (quoting Duren, 439 U.S. at 364, 99 S. Ct. at 668). Then, if the defendant establishes a prima facie violation, “the burden shifts to the state to justify the disproportionate representation by proving ‘a significant state interest’ is ‘manifestly and primarily advanced’ by the causes of the disproportionate exclusion.” Id. (quoting Duren, 439 U.S. ...

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