IN THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA No. 19–1837 Submitted October 21, 2021—Filed December 10, 2021 ANNA SOTHMAN, Appellant, vs. STATE OF IOWA, Appellee. On review from the Iowa Court of Appeals. Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Marion County, Michael K. Jacobsen, Judge. Applicant seeks further review of the court of appeals decision affirming the district court’s denial of her application for postconviction relief. DECISION OF COURT OF APPEALS AND DISTRICT COURT JUDGMENT AFFIRMED. Waterman, J., delivered the opinion of the court, in which Christensen, C.J., and Mansfield, McDonald, and Oxley, JJ., joined. McDermott, J., filed a dissent, in which Appel, J., joined. 2 Martha J. Lucey, State Appellant Defender, and Shellie L. Knipfer (argued), Assistant Appellate Defender, for appellant. Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Tyler J. Buller (argued), Assistant Attorney General, for appellee. 3 WATERMAN, Justice. In this appeal, we must decide whether a defense attorney’s advice about his client’s future prospects for release on parole and his failure to object to an in-chambers proceeding constituted ineffective assistance of counsel that entitles the defendant to vacate her guilty plea. The defendant left her thirteen-month-old daughter in the bathtub unattended for about thirty minutes, and during that time, the child drowned. The defendant pleaded guilty to child endangerment resulting in death, and the court imposed an indeterminate sentence of up to fifty years with immediate parole eligibility. She filed no direct appeal. Several years later, she filed this application for postconviction relief, alleging her plea counsel provided ineffective assistance in his parole advice and by failing to object to an in-chambers proceeding. Her plea counsel told her that defendants served an average of 4.6 years for child endangerment resulting in death. Other evidence developed later indicated that her parole was unlikely before she served seven years, or longer. The district court denied her application, finding she failed to prove breach of an essential duty or prejudice. We transferred the case to the court of appeals, which affirmed the district court, determining the defendant was correctly advised there were no guarantees, parole was up to the parole board, the in-chambers proceeding was not fundamentally unfair, and she failed to establish prejudice. We granted the defendant’s application for further review. On our de novo review, we affirm. The defendant failed to meet her burden to prove that her plea counsel breached an essential duty in his parole advice or 4 that but for his alleged errors, she would not have pleaded guilty and would have insisted on going to trial. We hold the defendant had a right to conduct the proceeding in open court and her counsel breached his duty by failing to object to his client being placed under oath in the in-chambers proceeding or elicit her waiver. But in this postconviction action, a showing of prejudice is required, and the defendant failed to show she was prejudiced by the in-chambers proceeding. We decline to find a structural error or presume prejudice. Accordingly, we affirm the decision of the court …
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