Supreme Court of Iowa, 2012

The court left standing the court of appeals’ affirmance of Clay’s burglary conviction for insufficient-evidence purposes, but vacated that court’s resolution of the ineffective-assistance claims.

The court held that Lamasters preserved his ineffective-assistance claims because the postconviction court’s ruling acknowledged and necessarily resolved them, even though its discussion was sparse and partly imprecise.

The court held that substantial evidence supported the jury’s finding that Mills’ car was an occupied structure because Harrington used it as refuge from an impending assault. It rejected Sanford’s additional pro se claims because two were unpreserved, the denial of a mistrial was not shown to be unreasonable, and…

The court held that the father did not preserve his due-process challenge to the fingernail drug test and that the admitted test report could be considered without separate reliability evidence when it appeared valid and drew no objection.