The number of appeals filed by a Carroll man convicted of second-degree sexual abuse nears the double digits as another is filed just days after a Carroll County District Court Judge dismissed an application for postconviction relief. The attorney for 29-year-old Jesse Raymond Neitzel, Arielle Lipman, filed the notice of appeal with the Iowa District Court for Carroll County on Wednesday, Dec. 9, just two days after the Dec. 7 order of dismissal. This appeal is to the Supreme Court of Iowa. Neitzel has been filing appeals and requests for postconviction relief continually since he was found guilty by a jury of sexually abusing a seven-year-old child and sentenced to 25 years on the class B felony charge. It was also ordered at the time of his sentencing that he must serve a minimum of 17.5 years. Neitzel was 16 years old at the time this crime was committed in 2007 and 19 years old when he was sentenced in 2010. In this week’s dismissal, Neitzel was seeking relief on claims of ineffective assistance of counsel at the trial, appellate and postconviction level, that he should have been tried as a juvenile and then he tendered a general “freestanding actual innocence claim.” This was dismissed based on a three-year limitation for postconviction relief applications and the fact that nothing at all, no documents, exhibits or records, accompanied the petition to the courts.
