State of Iowa v. John Walter Spooner

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
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No. 24-0249
Filed January 7, 2026
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State of Iowa,
Plaintiff–Appellee,
v.
John Walter Spooner,
Defendant–Appellant.
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Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County,
The Honorable David P. Odekirk, Judge.
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AFFIRMED
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Martha J. Lucey, State Appellate Defender, Kyle R. Kopf (argued), Student
Legal Intern, and Theresa R. Wilson, Assistant Appellate Defender,
attorneys for appellant.

Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Joshua Henry (argued), Assistant
Attorney General, attorneys for appellee.
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Heard at oral argument
by Chicchelly, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.
Opinion by Buller, J.

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BULLER, Judge.

John Spooner appeals following his conviction for arson in the first
degree, arguing the district court abused its discretion when it denied his
motion for new trial. He also asks us to take judicial notice of other district-
court proceedings, while the State moves to strike his reply brief for citing
outside-the-record materials. For the reasons that follow, we affirm the
conviction, deny the motion for judicial notice, and strike the offending
portions of the reply brief.

BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS
Spooner had been staying for a few days at a Waterloo home owned by
Tony Grider, where Grider lived with roommates Daniel Luck and Ellen
Hammett. The night before the fire, Spooner made some unusual statements
to Luck, including asking him: “Do you feel safe in this house?” Luck thought
the question was “kind of, like, off-the-chain”—he didn’t understand what
prompted it. So he brushed it off and told Spooner he didn’t want to hear
anything more like that. Hammett had a similarly strange encounter with
Spooner that night when she saw him pacing and talking to himself. She was
unnerved enough she texted Grider that she thought Spooner was
“tripping.”

Early the next morning, Tracy Glawe—a neighbor who briefly met
Spooner at the Grider house—encountered Spooner in a nearby church
parking lot; he had a large blue lighter in his hand. Glawe thought Spooner
was acting “different, just not normal” and recorded her interactions with
him on her cell phone for several minutes. On the recordings, Spooner says
“blow it up” or “blow ‘em up” multiple times, something about “gas” and
“smoke,” “get out while you can,” and “I did what I had to do.” He is also
seen repeatedly “flicking” the lighter. Glawe thought Spooner was either on

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drugs or not “in his right mind.” Some fifteen to twenty minutes after her
first encounter with Spooner, Glawe saw the Grider home “engulfed” in
flames.

Back at the house, Luck woke up to a loud bang. Next, he heard
someone—probably Hammett—screaming “the house is on fire.” Hammett
heard what she described as “a lot of glass breaking” before she saw flames
outside Grider’s room, jumped out the window, and screamed.

When Luck got up to look, he saw “nothing but flames outside [his]
window.” He felt his bedroom door, and it was hot. When he opened his door
and looked down the hall at Grider’s room, “it was all smoke coming out and
flames around the top of the door.” Luck couldn’t escape through the interior
of the house because of the fire, so he eventually pushed out his window-unit
air conditioner and planned to jump from the second story. He didn’t know
whether Grider was home or not, but the fire was raging through the lower
level. In his words: “You couldn’t get out. There’s no way a person could
walk through that and survive.”

Three different men commuting to work spotted the house fire and
stopped to render aid. As they approached, Hammett was still screaming
about the fire and that there was someone inside. The men helped Luck
successfully jump from his window into a makeshift pile of tires and garbage
containers. And they overheard chatter about “Tony” still being inside, but
the fire was too hot and the flames too big for anyone to attempt a rescue.

Two of the commuters spotted a gas can in the road about a house-
distance away from the fire, and one of these commuters had a dash-cam that
captured the gas can and scene on video. These commuters, as well as the
dash cam, also spotted Spooner nearby. One of the commuters spoke to

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Spooner, who seemed “calm” and “composed.” Spooner, unprompted, said
“Tony either can’t get out” or “doesn’t want to.” When Hammett asked
Spooner why he didn’t alert her or the others to the fire, Spooner responded
by asking her if she saw a serpent.

Waterloo Fire and Rescue responded to the blaze, which was only a
block from the fire station. Firefighters observed that “the whole front of the
house was on fire,” the porch was “fully engulfed,” and it was spreading. The
fire was heaviest on the porch. Firefighters pumped water to tame the flames
before making their way inside to search for Grider, who they found
unresponsive on his bedroom floor. One firefighter also spotted the gas can
in the street that the commuters had seen, moved it to the side of the road to
protect it, and located a matching nozzle nearby. Police seized the gas can and
nozzle. And investigators submitted samples from the gas can, Grider’s body,
and flooring from the scorched porch to the State Crime Lab for analysis by
the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI).

A fire investigator and the local fire marshal both concluded that the
fire most likely started on the porch near the front door based on the fire
damage, burn patterns, and movement of fire through the house. They
concluded there was no evidence the fire originated from an electrical source
like an appliance or outlet, a natural cause like a lightning strike, or any
accidental cause like a cigarette. Analysis by the DCI established that gasoline
was found in the gas can and on a piece of wood decking from the porch
consistent with where the fire investigator and fire marshal opined the fire
began. Another piece of flooring had an aromatic ignitable fluid—like a
lacquer thinner—on it, but its relevance to the fire was not clear. Additional
gas cans were identified near the front and back entrances to the house. No
gasoline was found on Grider’s person or effects.

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Officers took Spooner to the police department for questioning. He
was at times “kind of hard to understand,” but he also provided officers with
fairly detailed background information about himself. Spooner told officers
he was staying at the residence but said he thought Grider set the fire. He
explained further that he saw the fire had started on the porch and that he
tried to put it out. And he said he found a gas can near the fire but moved it.
Spooner never admitted to starting the fire and told the officers at one
point—essentially unprompted—that “this is not arson.” When they
searched his person, officers found Spooner had a large blue lighter.

While at the jail, one of the officers thought Spooner seemed “a little
delusional.” And he seemed at one point to be talking to himself or yelling at
people who weren’t there. He denied consuming any drugs or alcohol in the
last two days.

Independent of the policework at the scene, Waterloo police
investigators also worked on obtaining video surveillance from a nearby
church. They were able to acquire digital footage that showed Spooner on the
house’s porch for about two minutes before there was smoke, followed
shortly by the gas can rolling into the street, and the house visibly on fire
within three minutes. There was no smoke or fire visible until after Spooner
was on the porch.

The county attorney charged Spooner with arson in the first degree, a
class “B” forcible felony in violation of Iowa Code section 712.2 (2022).
Spooner demanded speedy trial. When the court asked on the first day of trial
whether Spooner understood he could waive speedy trial, he told the court
he understood and preferred to maintain his demand: “I just want to get it
[the case] cleared up and took care of as quickly as possible.” The jury found
him guilty as charged.

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After a lengthy series of continuances, Spooner eventually moved for
a new trial on the basis of what he claimed was newly discovered evidence in
the form of expert witness reports he commissioned and received after the
verdict. The State resisted, urging the defense could have timely obtained
this evidence with due diligence and that it would not have likely changed the
outcome at trial. After an evidentiary hearing, the district court denied the
motion for new trial by written ruling and sentenced Spooner to prison. He
appeals.

REQUEST FOR JUDICIAL NOTICE AND MOTION TO
STRIKE REPLY BRIEF
Before reaching the merits, we address a procedural issue submitted to
us by supreme court order. In his reply brief, Spooner encouraged our
appellate courts to take judicial notice of filings from a later district court case
in which he was charged with homicide for Grider’s death. From these
documents, Spooner makes arguments about how certain expert testimony
might have changed the outcome in the case giving rise to this appeal. The
State resists judicial notice and moves to strike Spooner’s reply brief on three
bases: first, that the documents Spooner points to are outside the record on
appeal; second, that the information was not before the district court when it
decided the issue; and third, that Spooner is attempting to impermissibly
raise a new issue in his reply brief.

Iowa Rule of Appellate Procedure 6.801 defines the record on appeal
to include:
a. Original documents and exhibits filed in the district court case
from which the appeal is taken.

b. Transcript of proceedings, if any.

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c. Court calendar entries prepared by the clerk of the district
court.

d. Documents from related cases when judicial notice was taken
of the specific document or file.

e. Documents or filings from other cases when required by law,
including Iowa Code section 822.6A involving claims of postconviction
relief.

Plainly the documents at issue were not from “the . . . case from which the
appeal is taken,” and Spooner argues instead we should take judicial notice
for the first time on appeal. 1 See id. But “it is not proper for the court to
consider or take judicial notice of the records of the same court in a different
proceeding without an agreement of the parties.” State v. Washington, 832
N.W.2d 650, 655–56 (Iowa 2013) (citation omitted); accord State v. Gale, 21
N.W.3d 151, 156 (Iowa 2025) (describing the “general rule” that “courts do
not take judicial notice of records in a different proceeding when a party
objects”). And here, the State objects to this outside-the-record material.

As a preliminary matter, we generally disfavor any attempt to raise new
issues or inject new record into an appeal by means of reply brief. See Villa
Magana v. State, 908 N.W.2d 255, 260 (Iowa 2018). For our purposes here,
we assume without deciding that Spooner’s reply brief is in fact responsive
rather than a new argument. And we conclude the information at issue is
outside the record on appeal: it is from a different district court case number,

1
In his resistance, Spooner briefly claims that April 2024 amendments to the rules
of appellate procedure may suggest some broadening of the power to take judicial notice
for the first time on appeal. We disagree. As Spooner admits, the rule refers to “when
judicial notice was taken”—past tense which refers to the proceedings below. Iowa R. App.
P. 6.801(d) (emphasis added). We similarly reject Spooner’s suggestion that we consider
the records because they were transmitted to the clerk of appellate courts in another
appeal: appellate courts are not like free-range chickens, hunting and pecking through
different case files in the clerk’s office.

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and it was not before the district court at the time it made its decision. See
Iowa R. App. P. 6.801; Alvarez v. IBP, Inc., 696 N.W.2d 1, 3 (Iowa 2005).
Given the State’s objection, we follow the general rule and decline to take
judicial notice for the first time on appeal. Washington, 832 N.W.2d at 655–56;
Gale, 21 N.W.3d at 156. And even if we had discretion to take judicial notice
for the first time at this stage of the proceedings, we would exercise our
discretion to decline judicial notice given the underlying policy rationales of
decisions like Washington and Alvarez and rule 6.801. As a result, we grant
the State’s motion to strike the offending portions of Spooner’s reply brief.
We do not consider any material from Spooner’s homicide case, though we
note in the interests of completeness that its direct appeal is also decided
today: State v. Spooner, No. 24-1180, 2026 WL ___ (Iowa Ct. App.
Jan. 7, 2026).

ERROR PRESERVATION AND UNPRESERVED
ERRORS
The State also challenges whether Spooner adequately preserved error
on all of the claims he advances on appeal. Spooner argued below that he was
owed a new trial on the basis of newly discovered evidence, and we find that
error was preserved. But Spooner makes some additional challenges on
appeal, including that he was denied a fair trial because he had to make a
choice between demanding speedy trial and giving his experts more time to
investigate the case and form their opinions. That argument was not made
below and is not preserved for our review.

Anticipating this problem, Spooner argues that our appellate courts
have a freewheeling power to reverse based on unpreserved errors when we
find the underlying trial was not fair. As authority for this claim, he cites a
fifty-year-old supreme court case—State v. Post, 123 N.W.2d 11, 15

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(Iowa 1963). We don’t think this reading of Post survives in the modern era
for at least three compelling reasons.

First, a legion of supreme court cases since then have firmly restated
our error-preservation rules. See, e.g., State v. Treptow, 960 N.W.2d 98, 109
(Iowa 2021) (“We have repeatedly rejected plain error review and will not
adopt it now.”); Meier v. Senecaut, 641 N.W.2d 532, 537 (Iowa 2002) (“It is a
fundamental doctrine of appellate review that issues must ordinarily be both
raised and decided by the district court before we will decide them on
appeal.”); State v. Rutledge, 600 N.W.2d 324, 326 (Iowa 1999) (“[S]imple
justice demands rigid adherence to the [error-preservation] rule.”). We could
not depart from these holdings even if we wanted to.

Second, Post and related cases relied on Iowa Code section 793.18
(1962), which then provided:
If the appeal is taken by the defendant, the supreme court must examine
the record, without regard to technical errors or defects which do not
affect the substantial rights of the parties, and render such judgment on
the record as the law demands; it may affirm, reverse, or modify the
judgment, or render such judgment as the district court should have done,
or order a new trial, or reduce the punishment, but cannot increase it.

But the General Assembly “narrow[ed]” that statute in the following
decade’s criminal code revision, adopting essentially the modern provision—
which grants the appellate courts “authority to disregard technical errors in
taking the appeal if corrected, but not to disregard any technical error.” State
v. Crawford, 972 N.W.2d 189, 205 (Iowa 2022) (Waterman, J., concurring in
part and dissenting in part); see also 1976 Iowa Acts ch. 1245, § 1420 (codified
at Iowa Code § 814.20 (1978)). In other words, to the extent a statute
previously granted appellate courts the freewheeling power to correct
unpreserved injustices, the General Assembly stripped that power nearly

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fifty years ago. And we observe that claiming such a power for ourselves
would be wholly in conflict with our statutory mandate: “We are a ‘court for
the correction of errors at law,’ and we cannot correct an ‘error’ the district
court never made.” State v. Hernandez, 20 N.W.3d 502, 509 (Iowa Ct.
App. 2025) (en banc) (quoting Iowa Code § 602.5103(1) (2022)).

Third, we tend to agree with the State’s observation that authority to
grant a new trial based on our sense of substantial justice is a creature of
civil—rather than criminal—procedure. See State v. Berge, No. 17-1097, 2018
WL 5291327, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 24, 2018) (noting “four areas where
the concept of substantial justice arises”: personal jurisdiction in civil cases,
a new trial under the rules of civil procedure, continuances under the rules
of civil procedure, and a civil mandamus action). As the supreme court
recently reiterated, we do not import concepts from civil law into criminal
law absent express direction. See Christensen v. Iowa Dist. Ct., 21 N.W.3d 529,
533 (Iowa 2025) (“The rules governing civil procedure were never intended
or designed to apply in criminal cases.”).

As a final observation on this point, we note that—even if something
like the Post power persisted today—we would not exercise it here. For largely
the same reasons we discuss below, we would not grant Spooner appellate
relief on this unpreserved error. He had a fair trial, and his buyer’s remorse
over demanding speedy trial is no basis for relief.

STANDARD OF REVIEW
We review denial of a motion for new trial claiming newly discovered
evidence for an abuse of discretion. State v. Uranga, 950 N.W.2d 239, 243
(Iowa 2020). The court below has “unusually broad discretion” to decide
these claims. Id. (cleaned up). And the supreme court has mandated the

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district court “closely scrutinize [these motions] and grant them sparingly.”
Id. (cleaned up).

DISCUSSION
The factual basis for Spooner’s new-trial claim was developed at an
evidentiary hearing in January 2024—more than a year after his
November 2022 trial. Spooner presented evidence from John Lentini and
Douglas Carpenter, two hired experts in different aspects of fire
investigation. According to Spooner’s trial attorney, she first solicited contact
information for expert witnesses on December 12, 2022—a month after trial.

Lentini, who focused more on fire chemistry, testified that he was first
contacted in May of 2023 and authored a report that same month. He opined
that the gasoline found on the deck did not come from the gas can found in
the road near the house. And he admitted that this opinion was based on a
calculation “outside the scope of the standard” governing the laboratory
equipment at issue.

Carpenter, who focuses more on engineering, was first contacted in
January 2023, visited the site of the house in late 2023, and reviewed video
and other evidence. He opined that the fire started in the living room (not on
the porch), but he was unable to identify a cause or what started the fire. In
other words, he would have ruled the cause of fire “undetermined.” This
opinion was based in part on certain findings from Grider’s blood, though
Carpenter admitted on cross-examination Grider’s blood levels were within
the normal documented range of persons who die in a fire.

The DCI criminalist also testified at the new-trial hearing, explaining
that scientific testing could neither prove nor exclude that the gasoline from
the gas can matched the gasoline found on the porch. And the fire marshal

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explained that he had considered but ruled out the alternative fire causes or
points of ignition put forward by Carpenter.

The district court denied the motion for new trial by written ruling
after the hearing. It correctly recited the law, recognizing the rules of criminal
procedure permit granting a new trial “when the defendant has discovered
important and material evidence in the defendant’s favor since the verdict
that the defendant could not with reasonable diligence have discovered and
produced at the trial.” Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.24(2)(c). And the court correctly
recognized the four elements the supreme court has distilled the rule into,
requiring a criminal defendant to prove the evidence “(1) was discovered
after the verdict, (2) could not have been discovered earlier in the exercise of
due diligence, (3) is material to the issues in the case and not merely
cumulative, and (4) probably would have changed the result of the trial.”
Uranga, 950 N.W.2d at 243 (citation omitted).

The district court focused its denial of Spooner’s motion on the
second and fourth prong—due diligence and the probability of changed
outcome. And the court made five specific findings:

• “[T]he evidence set forth in the defendant’s post-trial filings and
testimony offered through his witnesses [at the new-trial hearing]
could have been discovered with reasonable diligence and
produced at trial.”

• “The defendant stood on his demand for a speedy trial and made a
strategic decision not to continue trial to pursue other investigation
or defenses which he now wishes to present.”

• “The defendant’s request for a new trial is the kind of unfair
gamesmanship frowned upon by the supreme court in Uranga.”

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• “[T]he Court does not find the testimony of the defendant’s
experts would have changed the outcome at trial.”; and

• “The Court finds the overwhelming credible evidence at trial
supports a finding that the defendant started the fire.”

We consider Spooner’s appellate contentions with these findings in mind.
And like the district court, we focus on due diligence and the probability of a
changed outcome.

I. Due Diligence

The supreme court recently summarized the principles and precedent
surrounding the due-diligence prong:
The showing of diligence required is that a reasonable effort was made.
The defendant is not called upon to prove he sought evidence where he
had no reason to apprehend any existed. However, a defendant must
exhaust the probable sources of information concerning his case; he must
use that of which he knows, and he must follow all clues which would fairly
advise a diligent man that something bearing on his litigation might be
discovered or developed. Many, perhaps most, newly discovered evidence
claims must be rejected on the basis of the second standard (could not have
been discovered earlier in the exercise of due diligence)

As a general rule, a defendant is not entitled to a new trial on the
basis of newly discovered evidence where the defendant was aware of the
evidence prior to the verdict but made no affirmative attempt to obtain the
evidence or offer the evidence into the record. Thus, in State v. Jefferson,
[545 N.W.2d 248, 251 (Iowa 1996),] we affirmed the district court’s denial
of the defendant’s motion for new trial where the defendant learned of the
evidence during trial but took no affirmative action to get the evidence in
the record prior to the jury returning its verdict. We explained the
defendant must seek out evidence of which he was aware to prevent the
defendant from gambling on a defense verdict while holding back his
grounds for a new trial in case the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

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Similarly, in State v. Compiano, [154 N.W.2d 845, 851 (Iowa 1967)]
we affirmed the district court’s denial of the defendant’s motion for new
trial where the defendant learned of potential new evidence during trial
but did not seek a continuance to investigate the matter. We affirmed the
trial court’s finding that due diligence had not been shown. We explained
the rationale of the rule was to bring finality to the criminal trial and to
avoid unfair gamesmanship, stating, Courts are aware that, unless a
movant is required to show timely due diligence in the discovery of new
evidence, his newly discovered evidence might be withheld as trial strategy
to obtain a second trial if needed.

Uranga, 950 N.W.2d at 243–44 (cleaned up) (emphasis omitted). Applying
these principles, the supreme court denied Uranga relief because he “was
aware” of the newly discovered evidence before the verdict was rendered,
even though he never sought to obtain it. See id. at 244. And the court
emphasized that, when a defendant learns of potential new evidence during
trial, he should seek a continuance to investigate—not rely on a new-trial
motion for relief. Id.

With this backdrop, we discern no abuse of discretion by the district
court analyzing due diligence here. First, we defer to and credit the inherent
credibility determinations made by the district court in its finding that
Spooner made a strategic choice to not seek a continuance and that the
evidence at issue could have been discovered before or during trial in the
exercise of due diligence. Consistent with Compiano, we decline to reward
Spooner’s unfair gamesmanship by granting relief when Spooner gambled on
the verdict rather than waive speedy trial and conduct a more thorough
investigation with expert witnesses. See 154 N.W.2d at 850–51. And, like in
Uranga, we agree with the district court that Spooner “was aware” of or on
notice of the need to seek out this evidence well before the verdict was
returned, even though he declined to do so. See 950 N.W.2d at 243–44. We

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thus agree with the district court’s conclusion that the evidence could have
been timely discovered with due diligence.

In addition, we acknowledge the State in its brief supplies a laundry list
of state appellate courts that have concluded expert testimony is not newly
discovered if the facts underlying the testimony were known at trial. See, e.g.,
Foley v. Commonwealth, 425 S.W.3d 880, 887 (Ky. 2014); Woodward v. State,
276 So. 3d 713, 759–61 (Ala. Crim. App. 2018) (collecting cases); In re
Copland, 309 P.3d 626, 636 (Wash. Ct. App. 2013). We generally agree with
these courts. And we particularly agree with an observation made by the
Minnesota Supreme Court that, if every new expert opinion qualified as
newly discovered evidence, “no verdict would ever be final.” State v. Blasus,
445 N.W.2d 535, 543 (Minn. 1989). But, given our application of Uranga and
Compiano, we need not rest our holding exclusively on these out-of-state
authorities to affirm denial of the new-trial motion on the due-diligence
prong.

II. Probability of Changed Outcome

Even if we did not find the due-diligence prong warranted affirming,
we also agree with the district court’s finding that Spooner did not prove the
expert testimony was likely to change the outcome at trial, which
independently supports denying the new-trial motion. The district court “is
generally in a better position than we to determine whether evidence, newly
discovered, would probably lead to a different verdict upon retrial.”
Compiano, 154 N.W.2d at 849. And here, the court made specific findings
regarding the probability of a different outcome and concluded that “the
overwhelming credible evidence” supported a finding of guilt.

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Even if we were not bound to give deference to it, we agree with this
conclusion based on our review of the record evidence. “The standard for
whether the evidence probably would have changed the result of the trial is a
high one because of the interest in bringing finality to criminal litigation.”
More v. State, 880 N.W.2d 487, 499 (Iowa 2016). In our view, the gist of the
new-trial evidence was to impeach the arson investigation conducted by the
fire marshal, as supported by the crime lab’s testing. But, in reading the
transcript of the new-trial evidentiary hearing, we think the experts were at
best a wash when the State experts responded. And even if Spooner was able
to materially impeach the arson investigation’s conclusion about where in the
house the fire started, this does nothing to undermine the eyewitness
testimony, the video of Spooner holding the lighter, or the surveillance
footage of him walking up to the house and the house catching fire minutes
later. And beyond that, Spooner’s own admissions were damning albeit
bizarre: his repeated references to “blow it up” and “smoke,” that he saw the
fire start on the porch, and the video of him handling the gas can are all
incriminating if not compelling.

In short, we agree with the district court’s ruling. And we are mindful
that, even if we did not agree, we would be required to give great deference
to the district court given its advantaged position to decide new-trial issues.
Spooner has not demonstrated an abuse of discretion.

DISPOSITION
We affirm Spooner’s conviction for arson in the first degree, we deny
his request for judicial notice, and we grant the State’s motion to strike the
portions of Spooner’s reply brief that rely on outside-the-record information.

AFFIRMED.

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