State of Iowa v. Melissa Renee Pedersen

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 23-0724
Filed April 9, 2025

STATE OF IOWA,
Plaintiff-Appellee,

vs.

MELISSA RENEE PEDERSEN,
Defendant-Appellant.
________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Page County, Margaret Reyes,

Judge.

A defendant appeals her sentence for dependent adult abuse resulting in

serious injury. AFFIRMED.

Brian Scott Munnelly, Omaha, Nebraska, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Katherine Wenman, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee.

Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., and Langholz and

Sandy, JJ.
2

LANGHOLZ, Judge.

Melissa Pedersen’s eighty-one-year-old husband was found dead in their

home in June 2020. As she eventually admitted in her guilty plea, during the month

prior to his death, she denied him critical care when he was unable to care for

himself. She did not bathe him, change his dirty and urine-soaked bed linens, or

give him adequate food or water. She let him “suffer bed sores” and his body to

be “colonized by and eaten by maggots and cockroaches in an unsanitary and

insect-infested house and bedroom.” And she never called for medical assistance.

Pedersen was eventually charged with and pleaded guilty to dependent

adult abuse recklessly resulting in serious injury. See Iowa Code § 235B.20(3)

(2020).1 At sentencing, the State asked the district court to impose the five-year

maximum prison sentence because of the seriousness of the offense and

Pedersen’s prior conviction for dependent adult abuse by financial exploitation.

Pedersen argued for probation. During her allocution to the court, she explained

that while now she realizes she “should have basically done something,” she

thought she was granting her “husband’s wishes . . . to die at home” and “would

have been fighting his wishes” if she let him be taken to the hospital or nursing

home. And she worried that if she were sentenced to prison she might “end up

dying in there” because of her many health issues. Pedersen was fifty-three at the

time of sentencing. Her attorney also argued that the court should find it mitigating

that Pedersen “grew up with an abusive and alcoholic father, which it sounds like

1 Effective July 1, 2022—while this case was pending in the district court—this

statute was repealed and reenacted in substantially similar form as Iowa Code
section 726.26(4). See 2022 Iowa Acts ch. 1132, §§ 6–7.
3

[her husband] was relatively abusive to her as well,” and “maybe put her in a

situation where she was less likely to want to help him.”

The district court agreed with the State and imposed an indeterminate

prison sentence not to exceed five years. And Pederson appeals, again arguing

that the court should have imposed probation rather than a prison sentence. She

points to her attorney’s argument about her past abuse and contends that the court

abused its discretion because “[t]he mitigating factors presented by the defense

attorney called for [her] to be placed on probation.”

“We presume that a sentence within the statutory limits is valid and to

overturn it the defendant must show that the district court abused its discretion or

relied on inappropriate factors.” State v. Gordon, 998 N.W.2d 859, 862

(Iowa 2023). When reviewing for abuse of discretion, we do not “second guess

the decision made by the district court” but rather must only decide “if it was

unreasonable or based on untenable grounds.” Id. at 863 (cleaned up). So it is

not enough that the defendant merely disagrees with the court’s weighing of the

sentencing factors and the particular sentence selected. See id. (“The test for

whether a sentencing court abused its discretion is not whether we might have

weighed the various factors differently.”); Iowa Code § 901.5.

The district court’s rejection of Pedersen’s mitigation argument was not

unreasonable or based on untenable grounds. The court reasoned that it was

outweighed by the nature of the offense:

I don’t doubt that maybe . . . Mr. Pedersen was a difficult person, but
you’re here because of your own actions and not his, and if he were
unreasonable or unkind, you certainly had an ability to leave. I think
as I’ve looked through the evidence, and it’s horrific, I don’t think that
anyone that’s come in contact with this case has not been affected
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by the horrific nature of the evidence in the case, and so even if he
wanted to die at home, I can guarantee you he didn’t want to die at
home like this . . . . I can understand your difficult background, and I
am sorry for you for that. I can understand . . . the concerns you
have for your physical health should you be ordered to prison. One
thing I can tell you, Mrs. Pedersen, is that you will be better cared for
than Mr. Pedersen, and even if you die in prison, you will not die as
horrifically as Mr. Pedersen was allowed to die.

The court also summed up its consideration of the other sentencing factors:

I do believe there is a need for some mental health evaluation and
counseling, and I do certainly hope that you are able to obtain that.
Other than that, I don’t sense a lot of remorse from you, and so that
does play a very small part into my decision here today but, in
general, it is the evidence that existed in this case, the nature [of the]
offense, harm to the victim in this case, your need for some
rehabilitation and the necessity to protect the community from any
further offenses. I agree you’re not the criminal of the century, but
there are some offenses that are indeed horrific unto themselves and
for that reason—those are the reasons I’ve chosen to sentence you
now to five years of incarceration.

Seeing no abuse of discretion in the court’s sentencing judgment here, we affirm

Pedersen’s sentence.

AFFIRMED.