Michael Allen Zanoni v. State of Iowa

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA

No. 24-1739
Filed December 3, 2025

MICHAEL ALLEN ZANONI,
Applicant-Appellant,

vs.

STATE OF IOWA,
Respondent-Appellee.
________________________________________________________________

Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Story County, John J. Haney, Judge.

A postconviction applicant appeals the denial of relief. AFFIRMED.

Raya D. Dimitrova of Carr Law Firm, P.L.C., Des Moines, for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Timothy M. Hau, Assistant Attorney

General, for appellee State.

Considered without oral argument by Tabor, C.J., and Greer and Buller, JJ.
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BULLER, Judge.

Michael Zanoni appeals the denial of postconviction relief. He argues there

was a structural error in the postconviction proceedings, while the State contends

our review should be for ordinary breach of duty and prejudice. Finding recent

supreme court precedent supports the State’s position, we affirm.

I. Background Facts and Proceedings

Zanoni pled guilty to possession of methamphetamine as a habitual

offender and operating while intoxicated. He did not appeal but did file an

application for postconviction relief just inside the three-year statute of limitations.

The initial application did not allege any grounds. After the court ordered him to

substitute the application, he alleged “ineffective counsel” but still did not indicate

what relief he sought.

The State moved to dismiss the application, and court-appointed counsel

assisted Zanoni with drafting a third application, now challenging plea counsel’s

performance for not filing a motion in arrest of judgment. The motion to dismiss

remained pending and, about a month after filing the amended application,

appointed counsel withdrew due to a breakdown in the attorney-client relationship.

The court appointed a second attorney, who had also worked with Zanoni on

another of Zanoni’s postconviction applications. This second attorney helped file

another amended application, now alleging that trial counsel failed to fully

investigate the case and failed to properly advise Zanoni about the consequences

of pleading guilty. The court denied the motion to dismiss, and the State answered.

Zanoni then asked the second attorney to withdraw, and the attorney moved

to do so. The court granted the withdrawal after a reported hearing. A series of
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additional attorneys then appeared and subsequently withdrew, at least one due

to Zanoni’s complaints about them. Eventually the attorney we refer to as the last

appointed counsel appeared.

The State moved for summary disposition. The court held a hearing at

which Zanoni testified that he pled guilty based on plea counsel’s statements that

she would move for his immediate release on supervision once he pled guilty, but

in reality he remained in custody several additional days. This was the only claim

or basis for relief he advocated at the hearing. At the end of the hearing, the court

left the record open for the parties to file briefs if they chose to do so. The State

filed a brief, but Zanoni’s last appointed counsel did not.

The court granted what it called summary disposition,1 reasoning both that

Zanoni’s testimony was not credible and that plea counsel’s alleged shortcomings

did not affect the plea. Citing Iowa Code sections 822.6(2) and (3) (2024), the

court gave the following notice in writing:

The Court hereby gives notice to the parties that it intends to dismiss
this action, pursuant to Iowa Code section 822.6, for the reasons
described above. If the applicant wishes to file a reply to this notice
of intended dismissal, he must do so on or before August 23, 2024.
After this date, the court will either dismiss this action or order further
proceedings.

Zanoni’s last appointed counsel did not file a reply, and the court dismissed the

application. Less than a week later, the last appointed counsel moved for

reconsideration, explaining that he didn’t see the notice provision in the order and

1 We question whether this was really a summary-disposition hearing or a trial,

considering the applicant testified and the decision rendered was based in part on
finding the applicant not credible. But we think the label is ultimately immaterial
for purposes of this appeal.
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asking for an extension of time to respond. The court did not act on the

reconsideration request within that timeframe, and the last appointed counsel

asked for another extension to a date certain a week later. When counsel still did

not file any response to the notice by that date certain, the court denied the request

for reconsideration—reiterating that Zanoni’s claim failed on the merits. Zanoni

appeals, claiming there was a “structural error” in the proceedings.

II. Standard of Review

Our review of postconviction summary-disposition rulings is for correction

of errors at law. Castro v. State, 795 N.W.2d 789, 792 (Iowa 2011). In reviewing

such a ruling, we are mindful that summary disposition “is the put up or shut up

moment” in a postconviction case, “when [an applicant] must show what evidence

[he] has that would convince a trier of fact to accept [his] version of the events.”

Armstrong v. State, No. 21-1132, 2022 WL 2824750, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App.

July 20, 2022) (quoting Slaughter v. Des Moines Univ. Coll. of Osteopathic Med.,

925 N.W.2d 793, 808 (Iowa 2019)). To the extent our review considers the

effectiveness of counsel, we approach that question de novo. See Sothman v.

State, 967 N.W.2d 512, 522 (Iowa 2021).

III. Discussion

Our supreme court has recognized a discrete form of structural error in

postconviction proceedings. See Lado v. State, 804 N.W.2d 248, 252 (Iowa 2011).

In Lado, the applicant’s attorney filed nothing when a try-or-dismiss notice was

issued, leading to the postconviction court dismissing the case without ever

reaching the issues. Id. at 250. The supreme court found structural error in part
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because the “application was dismissed without any consideration of its merits or

meaningful adversarial testing.” Id. at 253.

Zanoni points to some unpublished decisions of our court, where we have

arguably expanded Lado or at least applied its holding to facts other than a

procedural dismissal that prevented a resolution on the merits. See Mayorga v.

State, No. 23-0029, 2024 WL 1295965, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 27, 2024);

Burkett Brown v. State, No. 21-1255, 2022 WL 1488542, at *1–2 (Iowa Ct. App.

May 11, 2022). But after we decided those cases, the supreme court decided Ruiz

v. State, 18 N.W.3d 453, 458–59 (Iowa 2025), where they re-examined Lado. The

court emphasized that the Lado reversal was justified in part because the district

court there did not reach the merits of the case. Ruiz, 18 N.W.3d at 458. Because

the lower court order in Ruiz reached the legal merits, and because the dismissal

was not on a procedural technicality but rather a substantive bar to recovery, the

supreme court held Lado’s structural error analysis did not apply—the ordinary

ineffective-assistance-of-counsel breach-and-prejudice analysis did. Id. at

458–59. In doing so, the supreme court affirmed our court’s majority opinion that

distinguished or declined to follow Mayorga. See Ruiz v. State, No. 24-0085, 2024

WL 3887241, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Aug. 21, 2024), aff’d, 18 N.W.3d 453

(Iowa 2025).

We have since applied Ruiz, recognizing it calls on us to differentiate

between cases of structural error due to lack or absence of counsel and cases in

which counsel’s alleged inaction “reflects the lack of merits in [the postconviction]

application.” Lawson v. State, No. 24-0193, 2025 WL 2407530, at *2 (Iowa Ct.

App. Aug. 20, 2025). This flows from the general principle, restated in Ruiz and
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other cases, that “[p]ostconviction counsel has no duty to pursue a meritless

claim.” Chandler v. State, No. 24-0399, 2025 WL 2237244, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App.

Aug. 6, 2025) (citing Ruiz, 18 N.W.3d at 459); see also State v. Tompkins, 859

N.W.2d 631, 637 (Iowa 2015) (“[W]here a claimant alleges counsel’s failure to

pursue a particular course breached an essential duty, there is no such duty when

the suggested course would have been meritless.”). And that principle is

consistent with our past decisions that affirm even scant postconviction records

when the applicant “identifies no meritorious claim that [postconviction] counsel

should have raised or raised more effectively.” Harkless v. State, No. 16-2082,

2017 WL 6513966, at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. Dec. 20, 2017).

Guided by Ruiz, we conclude Zanoni has not shown a structural error as

existed in Lado. His claim was not dismissed on a procedural technicality (like the

try-or-dismiss provision) but was instead decided on the merits, following an

adversarial hearing in which he was able to fully present his case through

arguments and testimony. As we said more than a decade ago about a different

postconviction applicant, “Perhaps [Zanoni] would have liked a more zealous

advocate, but he was not constructively without counsel.” Allard v. State,

No. 11-1641, 2013 WL 1227352, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Mar. 27, 2013). As a result,

we apply the familiar two-pronged approach of Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S.

668, 687–88 (1984), to evaluate postconviction counsel’s performance.

In our review of the admittedly limited record, it is difficult to discern any

viable claim that Zanoni’s last appointed counsel could have advanced. Zanoni’s

appellate brief certainly does not identify any basis on which he may have been

entitled to relief on the merits, and none is obvious to us when independently
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reviewing the underlying record. So we affirm. See Goode v. State, 920 N.W.2d

520, 526 (Iowa 2018); see also Uranga v. State, No. 24-0196, 2025 WL 1324125,

at *2 (Iowa Ct. App. May 7, 2025) (collecting cases where we applied Goode in

similar circumstances). And we note this approach was affirmed on further review

in Ruiz. See 18 N.W.3d at 459–60.

Last, an observation: We recognize that court-appointed counsel in

postconviction cases deal with voluminous records, frequently have little to work

with in terms of the facts or law, and must navigate clients who are often

dissatisfied with their services regardless of performance. And we recognize there

is sometimes no meritorious argument to put forward on an applicant’s behalf. But

records of inaction by counsel—like the lack of substantive resistance here—place

us in a difficult position of guessing as to whether the inaction is due to

incompetence or the meritless nature of a claim.

AFFIRMED.