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Lindaman hearing set as trial motions mount

Douglas Lindaman answers questions during his 2016 trial for third degree sexual assault. The Iowa Supreme Court has overturned Lindaman's conviction and remanded the case for retrial. Press file photo.
Douglas Lindaman answers questions during his 2016 trial for third degree sexual assault. The Iowa Supreme Court has overturned Lindaman’s conviction and remanded the case for retrial. Press file photo.
By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

A hearing has been set for Monday, Aug. 7, to rule on several motions that have been filed by Douglas Lindaman regarding his retrial on charges of third-degree sexual abuse.

A separate pretrial conference had been set for earlier this week, but the judge appointed to the case was not available and that conference was postponed, said Floyd County Attorney Rachel Ginbey.

Lindaman was originally convicted in April 2016 of third-degree sexual abuse and sentenced to up to 10 years in prison.

His conviction was overturned by the state Supreme Court earlier this year on the grounds that the Floyd County District Court had not fully protected Lindaman’s right to be represented by counsel when he chose to represent himself.

Lindaman raised several issues in his appeal in addition to the legal representation issue, but the court did not rule on those questions because the representation issue was enough in itself to cause the conviction to be reversed and the case remanded for retrial.

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 the boy get over a “blocked physiological disorder” and that the touch was not sexual and therefore not criminal.

Since the middle of June Lindaman has filed many motions, individually or as part of a group, many of them raising some of the same issues that he made in his appeal. The motions include:

• Asking that the jurors be instructed on “legitimate nonsexual contact” that does not fit the definition of a sex act as required for a conviction on sexual abuse.

• Asking that prospective jurors be required to answer 21 “psycho-sexual” questions to help determine their level of “ignorance and prejudice” against homosexuals.

Lindaman has said he is gay and that discrimination against homosexuals has played a role in the trial. He makes reference to a recent Iowa Supreme Court ruling that courts need to do a better job ensuring race diversity on juries, and argues the same standard should apply to sexual orientation.

• Asks that Ginbey be compelled to list other cases that she said in an interview with the Press after Lindaman was convicted, that she would have prosecuted at the time she decided to charge Lindaman.

Lindaman has alleged that Ginbey’s motive in filing the case in 2015, years after it was initially investigated, included an effort to keep him off the Charles City Board of Education, for which he was a candidate in the 2015 election. The charges in his case were filed less than two weeks before the election.

Lindaman had been convicted in 1988 of two counts of lascivious acts with a child, but his voting rights has been restored and so he was eligible to run for elected office.

Ginbey, who was elected in 2014, told the Press she found the Lindaman investigation notes when going through files from the previous county attorney, and that she found other cases that she would have prosecuted as well but the statute of limitations on those cases had passed.

• Motion for the court to find a “presumption of vindictiveness” on the part of the county attorney, and permission to present to the jury facts about “overreach by government and persecution.”

• Asking that the jury be instructed that Iowa law allows common law marriages with children as young as age 12 for females and 14 for males.

“The jury instruction helps to illustrate the broad range of historical human relationships which society has adopted and does not represent the defendant’s personal views. But, it is the law,” Lindaman writes in his motion.

• Asking that a 122-page book he wrote, “Iowa’s Tuskegee Experiment,” about discrimination against sexual orientation in Iowa and implicit bias against a sexual minority when selecting juries, be included in the record.

Lindaman said the book offers “a broader view of sexual discrimination and its impact on decision making by legal authorities.” The book says, “This treatise has been written for judges, lawyers and laymen,” and notes that 25 years ago Lindaman was vilified for his arguments for the justification of same-sex marriage, a position that has since been vindicated.

• Asking that Sean Crawford, the treatment director for the Sex Orientation Treatment Program at the Newton Correctional Facility, be subpoenaed to testify about “denial mechanisms” and how they “preclude accurate testimony” by state witnesses.

• Motion for appointment of legal counsel. Lindaman has indicated he will defend himself again, but this time he would like the aid of another attorney sitting in the “second chair” position.

Judge Gregg Rosenbladt ordered on Monday that the Mason City Public Defender’s Office be appointed to represent Lindaman, and Nellie O’Mara was initially assigned the case, but she later filed a motion asking that the Office of Public Defender withdraw as counsel because the office had represented the alleged victim at the time of the offense and there could be a conflict of interest.

• Motion for a neurological examination for the alleged victim. This was denied in the first trial.

• Motion to open the deposition process regarding recording equipment used in the original investigation of the case in 2011.

• Motion for forensic analysis of recording devices used in the original interviews. Lindaman says that parts of his original interviews with Division of Criminal Investigation agents are missing, and that if available they would show why the county attorney at the time, Normand Klemesrud, had decided to not press charges. Klemesrud died in 2014 and Ginbey was elected to the office that year.

• Motion to suppress the statements he made to DCI agents because he alleges there is not a complete record.

• Motion for a “spoliation instruction” to the jury because of the alleged missing interview evidence. Lindaman suggests the prosecution may have tampered with the evidence.

Ginbey said in a response to those motions that there is no evidence there were any problems with recording equipment or that there is missing testimony.

• Motion to not allow a state expert witness to testify, arguing that forensic interviewer Melinda Kracke’s opinions were not relevant to the case and served only to “inflame prejudice against the defendant.”

• Motion to tell jurors at the beginning of the trial that they have the right to question witnesses.

• Motion to instruct jurors to use a “strict scrutiny doctrine” regarding discrimination concerning sexual orientation.

• Asking for a change of venue out of Floyd County and sequestration of the jury because of “profound publicity” about the original trial, the Iowa Supreme Court ruling to overturn his conviction and the new trial.

Ginbey has filed some motions in response to Lindaman’s motions. Of the Lindaman motions that she has so far addressed, she has resisted all of them except the motion for a change of venue.

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