Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The Iowa Court of Appeals took no position on a state request for review of a district court’s order concerning three counts of public indecent exposure at a Hamburg strip club.
The District Court for Fremont County, after hearing evidence, determined that the state failed to prove the indecent exposure charges against the strip club did not fall into an exemption for theaters, and subsequently dismissed the case.
The Iowa Attorney General’s Office sought and received discretionary review of the district court order by the Iowa Supreme Court. That court transferred the appeal to the Iowa Court of Appeals. The state acknowledges that double jeopardy prevents a retrying of the Hamburg case, but requested a review for future judicial and prosecutor benefit. In particular, the state sought “an interpretation of the theater exception in [Iowa Code] section 728.5.”
The court, noting that even in its request the state alluded to the fact that “we ordinarily will not review state challenges to the sufficiency of the evidence supporting a judgment of acquittal,” determined that the particular appeal before them raised just such a challenge.
The district court required the state to prove as an element of its case “that [the] place of business was not a theater.” After summarizing the evidence proffered by the state on this element, the court concluded that the state “failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that [the strip club] was not a theater.” On appeal, the state frames the issue for review as “whether a strip club in which the defendant permitted a minor to dance fully nude qualifies as a ‘theater’ exempted under the public decency statute contained in Iowa Code section 728.5.” This issue as framed squarely challenges the sufficiency of the evidence on the theater element.
“No useful purpose would be served by reaching the merits of this factual issue,” wrote Judge Anuradha Vaitheswaran, who heard the case along with Chief Judge Rosemary Shaw Sackett and Judge David Danilson.
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