IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA No. 19-1254 Filed February 3, 2021 HIPOLITO DUBON PANTALEON, Applicant-Appellant, vs. STATE OF IOWA, Respondent-Appellee. ________________________________________________________________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Boone County, Bethany Currie, Judge. Hipolito Dubon Pantaleon appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief. AFFIRMED. Benjamin D. Bergmann and Alexander Smith of Parrish Kruidenier Dunn Boles Gribble Gentry Brown & Bergmann L.L.P., Des Moines, for appellant. Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, and Sheryl Soich, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee State. Considered by Bower, C.J., Greer, J., and Scott, S.J.* *Senior judge assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206 (2021). 2 SCOTT, Senior Judge. Hipolito Dubon Pantaleon (Dubon) appeals the denial of his application for postconviction relief. He argues the postconviction court abused its discretion in denying his request for an expert witness on false confessions at state expense and in rejecting his claims of ineffective assistance of his criminal defense attorney in plea negotiations and at trial. As to the ineffective-assistance claims, Dubon argues counsel improperly failed to (1) understand the immigration consequences of the convictions and organize his defense or reach a plea agreement based on the immigration consequences, (2) properly challenge the entry of his confession by proposing a new promissory-leniency standard under the Iowa Constitution and retaining an expert witness on the issue of false confessions, (3) propose a stricter standard for confrontation clause issues under the Iowa Constitution, (4) properly handle evidence allegedly vouching for the victims’ credibility, and (5) pursue a false memory theory of defense. Lastly, Dubon claims counsel’s mistakes amount to cumulative error. I. Background Facts and Proceedings In 2013, Dubon was charged by trial information with two counts of lascivious acts with a child and one count of indecent contact with a child, stemming from his alleged conduct with his two daughters. The children had previously been interviewed at a child protection center, and Dubon had made inculpatory statements during a police interview, all of which were recorded. Dubon unsuccessfully moved to suppress all of the video evidence, the confession as in violation of his Miranda rights, and the children’s interviews on hearsay and confrontation grounds. The court subsequently granted the State’s motion to 3 permit the children to testify at trial through closed-circuit television, pursuant to Iowa Code section 915.38(1) (2013). Following a bench trial, the court found Dubon guilty of two counts of lascivious acts with a child. On appeal, we affirmed Dubon’s convictions, rejecting his challenges to the court’s admission of the children’s interviews and grant of the State’s section 915.38(1) motion. See generally State v. Pantaleon, No. 15-0129, 2016 WL 740448 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 24, 2016). Dubon filed an application for postconviction relief, raising various claims of ineffective assistance of counsel in the criminal proceeding. He subsequently moved for appointment of an expert at state expense “to prove what the expert would have said if he had been properly retained by prior counsel” on the issue of false confessions. The court denied ...
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