Lindaman retrial scheduled for February 2018

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A new date has been set for the retrial of Douglas Lindaman of Charles City.

A scheduling conference was held Thursday morning among the attorneys in the case and the district court scheduler. The trial is now set to begin on Tuesday, Feb. 20, 2018, in Franklin County District Court in Hampton

Six days have been scheduled for the trial.

The trial had been set to begin in October, but was delayed after District Court Judge Gregg Rosenbladt ruled that he needed additional time to consider the motions and other issues that have been filed and raised by both sides.

The judge has still not issued any rulings on those motions.

Lindaman is charged with third-degree sexual abuse. He was convicted in April 2016, but the Iowa Supreme Court overturned that conviction and sent the case back to Floyd County District Court for retrial.

Rosenbladt agreed to move the trial out of Floyd County on a change of venue because of extensive publicity surrounding the case.

Lindaman had sought the original postponement of the trial, writing in his motion for a continuance, “There are twenty pending motions related to trial preparation and defendant’s right to a full and fair trial, including motions and issues pertaining directly to presentation and determination of evidence, discovery, jury selection and issues of bias.

“Defendant cannot adequately prepare for trial without knowing well in advance of trial how the pending motions will impact witnesses, evidence and jury selection, and will need sufficient opportunity to respond and adjust to the potential rulings on the pending motions as required by his right to due process,” wrote Lindaman and his standby attorney, William Morrison of Mason City.

Floyd County Attorney Rachel Ginbey, who prosecuted the original trial in 2016 and will be the prosecutor on the retrial, had opposed the postponement.

Lindaman was charged in 2015 with having sexually touched a 17-year-old boy in 2011, after hiring the boy as a farmhand. Lindaman argued at his first trial that he touched the boy “therapeutically” to help him get over a “blocked physiological disorder” and that the touch was not sexual and therefore not criminal.

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 when a three-justice-panel of the Iowa Supreme Court reversed the conviction on May 19 and remanded the case for retrial.

Lindaman, who had a law license and who had been a magistrate, represented himself at his trial in April 2016, and that was the basis for the Iowa Supreme Court reversing the conviction.

The justices ruled that the district court had not adequately assured Lindaman’s decision to represent himself was “intelligent and knowing” and the court had not fulfilled the legal requirements for a discussion necessary before someone proceeds to defend himself or herself.