On Nov. 6, 2019, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected the seventh appeal of a Carroll man who was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in prison on second-degree sexual abuse charges. It seemed this would be the end of the line in the appeals process for 29-year-old Jesse Raymond Neitzel, but at the end of March, Neitzel formally filed an application for post-conviction relief with the Iowa District Court for Carroll County. In his application, Neitzel writes that his grounds for this request are ineffective assistance of his trial, appellate and post-conviction counsel and their failure to “discover evidence material in nature that would have led to conviction being reversed and remanded.” Neitzel also claims that his case should have been tried in the juvenile courts. He was 16 years old when arrested and convicted by a jury and sentenced at 19 years old, in June of 2010. He was found guilty of this class B felony for the sexual abuse of a seven-year-old child. Neitzel was ordered to serve a minimum of 17.5 years of that 25 year sentence. In his last appeal, his own counsel told the courts they could take no position to argue for relief in this case as they have “an ethical duty to present meritorious and non-frivolous evidence and argument.”
