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Don't Plead History and Bruen in Cruel and Unusual Punishment Challenge to Long Prison Sentence for Rape, When Rape Was Historically a Capital Crime

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


From yesterday's decision of the Iowa court of Appeals in Cue v. State, written by Judge Tyler Buller and joined by Judges Julie Schumacher and John Sandy:

Cue's … application for postconviction relief … cited New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass'n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), to claim that Iowa's mandatory-minimum-sentencing scheme for certain class "B" felonies (seemingly as applied and on its face) was incompatible with our historical traditions and therefore cruel and unusual punishment. The district court denied relief, finding Cue cited "absolutely no authority to support his proposition that the Bruen test should be profoundly expanded to include sentencing schemes for sex offenses." …

Cue pled guilty in 2019 to four counts of sexual abuse in the second degree, class "B" felonies in violation of Iowa Code section 709.3(1)(b) (2017), for raping and molesting his minor children over the course of years. The sentencing court ran half of the counts concurrent and half consecutive, amounting to two consecutive twenty-five-year prison sentences, each of which has its own 70% mandatory minimum. We affirmed on direct appeal….

[W]e reject any claim grounded in Bruen. We recently disposed of a similar Bruen challenge to the statute of limitations for postconviction relief….

First, we are … aware of no court expanding Bruen beyond the Second Amendment, and Cue … offers no compelling reason we should be the first.

Second, existing Iowa law requires us to reject the claim. See State v. Laffey (Iowa 1999) (rejecting a cruel-and-unusual-punishment challenge to an identical prison sentence for identical convictions, with an even greater mandatory minimum).

And third, history does not favor the leniency Cue seeks: rape was a capital crime when the Eighth Amendment was adopted. Bruen is not a magic talisman reopening litigation of every constitutional right for prison inmates, and it is no basis for relief on Cue's claims….

Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney General, represents the state.

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any institution.