Opinion
No. 3-440 / 02-1616
Filed August 27, 2003
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, Richard G. Blane, II, Judge.
Alejandro Garcia appeals from the dismissal of his application for postconviction relief. AFFIRMED.
Jesse Macro, Jr., Des Moines, for appellant.
Thomas J. Miller, Attorney General, Richard Bennett, Assistant Attorney General, John Sarcone, County Attorney, and Frank Severino, Assistant County Attorney, for appellee.
Considered by Habhab, Snell, and Brown, Senior Judges.
Senior Judges assigned by order pursuant to Iowa Code section 602.9206 (2003).
In this postconviction relief action the petitioner seeks to distinguish the issue he now raises from the issue previously decided by our supreme court on direct appeal in State v. Garcia, 616 N.W.2d 594 (Iowa 2000). We affirm the trial court's grant of the State of Iowa's motion for summary judgment.
The petitioner, Alejandro Garcia, was convicted of first-degree murder following a bench trial. Garcia and four companions were hired to discipline the eventual victim for allegedly defaulting on a drug deal. This ultimately resulted in Garcia shooting the victim four times. The victim sustained life-threatening injuries, including serious breathing problems, and he was placed on a ventilator in the hospital. The supreme court described the incident leading to the victim's death:
While the victim was hospitalized and while he was being shaved by a hospital employee, a tracheotomy tube used to connect him to the ventilator was nicked, and the attending physician decided to change the tube to increase the efficiency of the oxygen getting into the lungs. Due to the victim's swollen neck, as the tube was being changed, his airway closed and the attending physician was unable to replace the tube. As a result, the victim asphyxiated.Garcia, 616 N.W.2d at 595-96.
On direct appeal, Garcia claimed the trial court erred in not permitting him to present evidence that the attending physician's action in attempting to replace the tracheotomy tube was an intervening event constituting the proximate cause of the victim's death, relieving Garcia of criminal responsibility. Our supreme court, on further review from the court of appeals, affirmed the trial court, holding that the physician's action, even if grossly negligent, could not have been the sole proximate cause of the victim's death. Therefore, Garcia was not relieved of legal responsibility for the death.
Garcia now claims his trial and appellate counsel were ineffective for failing to urge the acts of the employee in nicking the tracheotomy tube constituted the proximate cause of the victim's death, rather than the negligence of the physician in attempting to reinsert a different tube. He claims the acts of the employee are of a different nature than those of the physician, and he should have been allowed to present evidence in that respect. The postconviction trial court disagreed and granted the State's motion for summary judgment.
Other issues had been raised by Garcia and were involved in the State's motion for summary judgment. The trial court did not grant summary judgment on those issues and reserved them for trial. However, Garcia later withdrew those claims and they are no longer issues.
Summary judgment should be granted when there are no material issues of fact and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. Iowa R.Civ.P. 1.981(3). Summary judgment is proper when the only conflict concerns legal consequences flowing from undisputed facts. Jacobs v. Stover, 243 N.W.2d 642, 643 (Iowa 1976). Summary judgment is appropriate in a postconviction relief action when the petitioner seeks to relitigate a claim decided on direct appeal. The petitioner may not disguise an already-litigated issue as a new claim. See Rinehart v. State, 234 N.W.2d 649, 655. (Iowa 1975).
In Garcia the supreme court observed
[a] defendant can be relieved of criminal responsibility if an intervening act breaks the chain of causal connection between the defendant's actions and the victim's death. However, for an intervening act to relieve a defendant of criminal responsibility for homicide, the intervening act must be the sole proximate cause of death. In deciding whether medical treatments are superceding causes, we have stated:
The intervention of a force which is a normal consequence of a situation created by the actor's negligent conduct is not a superceding cause of harm which such conduct has been a substantial factor in bringing about.Garcia, 616 N.W.2d at 597 (emphasis in original) (citations omitted). This rule applies even if the intervening conduct is characterized as gross negligence. Id at 598.
The petitioner has cited no authority for the proposition that the act of the hospital employee in taking care of the victim should be considered differently than the physician's care of the victim. The employee's act led to the physician's decision to reinsert a tube. Both were participating in the treatment and care of the victim. We fail to see a significant difference in the manner in which the two acts should be treated.
Garcia argues the cutting of the tube is akin to an earthquake or fire causing the victim's death in that the death was not caused by an act of the petitioner. We reject this analogy. The test is not whether the act claimed to intervene was initiated by the petitioner, but whether it was a normal consequence of the situation created by Garcia's criminal acts, that is, was the act reasonably foreseeable. See 1 Wayne R. LaFave and Austin W. Scott, Jr., Substantive Criminal Law§ 3.12(f)(3), at 407-08 (1986). We believe it was. The hospital employee's act does not generate that "rare case in which a criminal defendant is relieved from responsibility for the death of the victim." Garcia, 616 N.W.2d at 599.
In Garcia, our supreme court held "no reasonable fact finder could conclude the medical treatment was the sole proximate cause of death." Id. We believe this rationale applies to the act of the hospital employee in nicking the tracheal tube as well as to the physician attempting to reinsert the tube. The postconviction trial court was correct in granting summary judgment to the State.
The State also claims the petitioner failed to preserve error on the claim now presented. In view of our disposition of the case, we deem it unnecessary to address that issue.