The Iowa Court of Appeals selects certain opinions for publication in the Northwestern Reporter. In July, the Court of Appeals selected two opinions for publication. Following are summaries of those opinions.
Thompson v. State, No. 25-0891
Opinion date: April 29, 2026
On appeal from Pottawattamie County District Court
Issue:
- Whether the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision in State v. White, 9 N.W3d 1 (Iowa 2024), applies retroactively to invalidate Thompson’s conviction based on his Confrontation Clause challenge.
Eric Thompson was convicted of kidnapping in the first degree and assault causing bodily injury in 2000 and was sentenced to life without parole for kidnapping and sexually abusing a ten-year-old child. At trial, the district court admitted testimony of the child-victim’s deposition wherein Thompson had been ordered to leave the room and observe the deposition from a separate room. Thompson filed prior applications for post-conviction relief arguing that his Confrontation Clause rights were violated by this procedure. In his fourth application for post-conviction relief, Thompson argued that the Iowa Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in State v. White applied retroactively such that the admission of the child’s deposition testimony violated his right to confrontation.
The Iowa Court of Appeals affirmed the post-conviction court’s denial of Thompson’s application. rejected Thompson’s arguments and concluded White applies only prospectively, finding the Iowa Supreme Court has several times found that “a change in our understanding of the right to confrontation” generally has not been applied retroactively. The Court separately rejected the “watershed” rule proposed by Thompson, finding that it had only been applied once by the United States Supreme Court regarding the right to appointed counsel and otherwise the “watershed” rule had been repeatedly rejected. Finally, the Iowa Court of Appeals concluded that even if White applied retroactively, any error in the admission of the child-victim’s deposition testimony was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt because evidence of Thompson’s guilt was overwhelming. Judge Buller authored the opinion of a unanimous panel.
Skaggs v. Carson, No. 25-1282
Opinion date: May 27, 2026
On appeal from Linn County District Court.
Issues:
- Whether Iowa Code chapter 598C—Iowa’s Uniform Deployed Parents Custody and Visitation Act—permits a district court to grant temporary caretaking authority over a deployed parent’s child to a nonparent rather than to the child’s other, nondeployed parent.
- Whether the district court properly denied the nondeployed parent’s petition to modify the parties’ prior custody-and-support order under Iowa Code chapter 600B.
- Whether the district court erred in awarding the deployed mother’s trial attorney fees and whether the appellate court should award appellate attorney fees.
Brandon Skaggs and Kodi Carson are unmarried parents of a daughter, with a 2021 order that placed the child in Carson’s physical care and granted Skaggs visitation. Carson is a member of the National Guard and, after she spent approximately nine months in Texas for National Guard training, Skaggs petitioned to modify the prior order. While Skaggs’s petition to modify that order to joint physical care was pending, Carson received orders to deploy to Kosovo for nine months and Skaggs then sought a temporary order under Iowa Code section 598C.301 placing the daughter in his physical care. Carson resisted, arguing caretaking authority should be delegated to her mother under section 598C.305. The district court held an expedited hearing before Carson’s deployment and granted Carson’s request, finding that the statutory requirements were satisfied and that placement with Carson’s mother served the child’s best interest. By the time of the modification trial, Carson had returned from deployment, and the district court denied Skaggs’s modification petition for failure to show a substantial change in circumstances, also awarding Carson $19,000 in trial attorney fees.
On appeal, the Iowa Court of Appeals first addressed mootness, and found that although the temporary chapter 598C order was no longer in effect after Carson returned from deployment and the issue therefore moot, it would still reach the merits under the public-importance exception to mootness. The Court found that the scope of a court’s authority to place a deployed servicemember’s child with a nonparent is a matter of public concern, no Iowa appellate court had yet construed chapter 598C, and the issue is likely to recur, and such temporary orders tend to evade appellate review due to their expedited and short-lived nature.
The Court then addressed the merits of the temporary order and held that the express terms of section 598C.305 authorized the district court to grant caretaking authority to Carson’s mother as a qualifying nonparent even when a fit, nondeployed parent is available, because the statutory eligibility requirements were met and the arrangement was in the child’s best interest. The Court found that the best-interest standard in section 598C.305(4) incorporates the factors of Iowa Code section 598.41(3) and those set out in the Iowa Supreme Court’s 1974 opinion in In re Marriage of Winter and that nothing in Chapter 598C creates a presumption favoring the nondeployed parent. The Court agreed with the district court that placing the daughter with Carson’s mother—who had already provided substantial care, lived near the child’s daycare and preschool, and preserved stability—served the child’s best interest better than uprooting her to live with Skaggs, who had never been her primary caretaker and would have required changing the child’s daycare, school, and surrounding relationships.
Regarding modification of the prior custody-and-support order, the Court agreed with the district court that Skaggs failed to carry his “heavy burden” of showing a substantial and permanent change in circumstances, because Carson’s periodic military training and deployments were foreseeable at the time of the original 2021 order and were, in any event, temporary rather than permanent. Finally, the Iowa Court of Appeals found no abuse of discretion in the trial attorney-fee award to Carson given the parties’ disparate abilities to pay, and it exercised its own discretion to award Carson $8,000 in appellate attorney fees as the prevailing party on appeal. Judge Langholz authored the opinion of a unanimous panel.
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