Lindaman files motions for new trial or dismissal on assault conviction

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

Douglas Lindaman of Charles City has filed motion in Floyd County District Court seeking what would be a fourth trial on charges of third-degree sexual abuse, after having been found guilty of a lesser charge at his last trial in April.

Lindaman raises a number of issues in his motion filed earlier this month, for a new trial or for the verdict to be dismissed. Several of them deal with arguments that he has made in court previously.

First, Lindaman again argues that the court should require a physical examination of the alleged victim’s genitals.

Lindaman was accused of touching the genitals of a 17-year-old boy who was working for Lindaman as a farmhand. He admitted touching the boy, but said it was for therapeutic reasons to help the boy deal with “psychological trauma” that stemmed from the boy’s embarrassment over the size of his genitals.

In April a Cerro Gordo County jury found Lindaman not guilty of the charge of third-degree sexual abuse, a felony, but did find him guilty of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, an aggravated misdemeanor.

Lindaman argues that the court’s failure to grant a physiological exam “impaired the defendant’s constitutional right to confront the witness.”

Lindaman, who was acting as his own attorney with the aid of standby counsel in his last trial, writes that “the defendant should be granted a new trial with access to a groin exam of the complaining witness in a sober search for the truth.”

The second issue he raised has to do with the wording of jury instructions regarding legitimate, non-sexual contact with another person’s genitals.

Lindaman has given the example of a parent cleaning and diapering an infant as an example of touching another person’s genitals in a manner that is legitimate and non-sexual, and has argued that his touching of the alleged victim was similarly legitimate and non-sexual.

He argues that the court’s instructions to the jury did not make clear how non-sexual legitimate contact should be treated regarding the crime charged.

Lindaman also again raises the issue of the timing of Floyd County Attorney Rachel Ginbey in filing the charge against him 10 days before a school board election in 2015, in an election in which Lindaman was a candidate, and of errors in the law citation in the original trial information.

The trial judge has ruled previously that technical errors in filing charges can be corrected if they do not prejudice the defendant, and that the timing of the charges is not relevant because it is the evidence presented in the case that will convince the jury the defendant is either guilty or not guilty.

Lindaman argues that the amended trial information was prejudicial against his rights.

Finally, he argues that the jury could not find him guilty of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse because he was not charged with that crime, and it is not a lesser version of the crime with which he was charged, and so the verdict should be dismissed.

The charge of sexual abuse in the third degree has to do with committing sex acts, he wrote in his motion, while the charge of which he was convicted has to do with “assaultive behavior,” which he called “an entirely different legal animal.”

The judge in the case, Judge Gregg Rosenbladt, has set a hearing on Lindaman’s sentencing at 9 a.m. June 22.

Lindaman had previously filed other motions after his conviction, including arguing that he should be given no prison time on the sentence because of his age, 62, and because he had already served 420 days in county jail or state prison on the original conviction on the sexual assault charge that was overturned by the Iowa Supreme Court.

Lindaman was charged in 2015 with third-degree sexual abuse for allegedly sexually touching a 17-year-old boy in 2011, after hiring the boy as a farmhand. The charge is a Class C felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

Lindaman was convicted at a jury trial April 12, 2016, in Charles City, on one count of sexual abuse in the third degree, and sentenced to serve up to 10 years in state prison.

He was serving that sentence in the Newton Correctional Facility when a three-justice-panel of the Iowa Supreme Court reversed the conviction on May 19, 2017, and remanded the case for retrial.

Lindaman, who has a law degree but who no longer had a law license, had represented himself at his trial in April 2016, and the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the Floyd County District Court had not fulfilled the legal requirements for a discussion necessary before someone proceeds to defend himself or herself.

On the second day of Lindaman’s retrial, which began in February in Franklin County, under questioning by County Attorney Ginbey, two of the witnesses made brief references to Lindaman having been in prison before, referring to a conviction in 1988 on two felony counts of lascivious acts with a child, for which he served two years in prison.

The topic of Lindaman’s criminal history was to be off-limits during the trial, and the prosecution was to have admonished her witnesses to not bring it up.

Lindaman moved for a mistrial and Judge Rosenbladt granted that motion.

At the third trial, in April, a Cerro Gordo County jury found Lindaman guilty of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse, an aggravated misdemeanor.

The possible sentence for this conviction on assault with intent to commit sexual abuse is up to two years in prison.

After his original conviction was overturned, Lindaman was released on bail in June 2017, having served almost 14 months in prison.

“He could be given credit for time served and have nothing left, or he could serve the remainder of two years,” Ginbey said in an email to the Press.