Iowa

Teachers who carry guns would have qualified immunity under a bill that cleared the Iowa Senate

Published

2 years ago

April 11, 2024

Teachers who carry guns would have qualified immunity under a bill that cleared the Iowa Senate

A bill that would make it easier for teachers and other school employees to carry firearms is headed back to the House after passing out of the Iowa Senate Wednesday.

Schools can already authorize employees to carry weapons under current state law, but when a few districts — including Spirit Lake and Cherokee — tried to enact policies creating armed security teams they were told by their insurer that they would lose coverage.

Republican supporters said their bill (HF 2586) is meant to make it easier for districts to follow through on their plans and find affordable insurance if they choose to arm staff members, but opponents said it raises the question of who would be responsible if something goes wrong.

The bill creates a professional permit for armed school workers. It would require them to go through multiple rounds of training that would cover everything from emergency medicine to communication with law enforcement and simulated shooting scenarios.

A teacher or school worker who completes the training would be granted qualified immunity from criminal or civil liability in any situation where they use “reasonable force” at their school. The district would also be covered by qualified immunity.

GOP lawmakers believe that change will make the districts insurable, but Democrats said protection from liability would not be needed unless there was a risk that a gun could be mishandled or that an armed teacher may accidentally harm an innocent person.

“It’s an acknowledgement that that’s the expected outcome, that this will be the likely result of having untrained, unskilled, very likely unqualified people with loaded weapons in our schools,” said Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott, D-West Des Moines. “The authors of this bill understand we are putting Iowa children, teachers, school staff at risk of injury or even death.”

Republican lawmakers said the greater risk is waiting additional minutes for law enforcement to respond to an active school shooting when armed staff may have the chance to intervene sooner. Sen. Julian Garrett, R-Indianola, said he believes having the chance to stop a shooter is worth the risk of an accident.

“We’re better off taking that tiny little risk than we are taking the big risk of having nobody there to protect our children if that need arises,” Garrett said.

The bill is part of GOP lawmakers’ response to the Perry High School shooting in January which resulted in the death of principal Dan Marburger, sixth grade student Ahmir Jolliff and the 17-year-old gunman.

A separate bill passed in the House would create a grant program to help schools pay for firearms and training.

Gun control advocates condemned the legislature’s plans to clear the way for schools to arm teachers. The group Everytown for Gun Safety called on lawmakers to restrict overall access to guns instead of helping put guns in schools.

“Guns are turning our schools into graveyards, and yet, Iowa lawmakers are hell-bent on arming our teachers as a response. It literally defies all common sense,” Chloe Gayer, a volunteer leader with the Drake University chapter of Students Demand Action, said in a statement.

The bill includes a requirement for school districts with more than 8,000 students to have at least one school resource officer or private security officer present at each location that enrolls students in 9th through 12th grade. School boards would be able to opt out of that requirement, however.

The proposal passed on a vote of 30-14 and is headed back to the House after it was amended to remove a grant program to help schools pay for security officers.

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Iowa

Iowa State football running back Carson Hansen to leave Cyclones

Published

5 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Press Room

Iowa State football running back Carson Hansen to leave Cyclones

Iowa State football running back Carson Hansen announced on Dec. 23 that he “will be pursuing new opportunities with my last year of eligibility.”

Hansen is the latest Cyclones star to indicate that he will transfer to another school in the wake of coach Matt Campbell’s departure to Penn State. Quarterback Rocco Becht and cornerbacks Jeremiah Cooper and Jontez Williams are among the other Iowa State standouts leaving Ames.

Hansen, a native of Lakeville, Minn., rushed for 952 yards on 188 carries during his junior season with the Cyclones. In three years with Iowa State, he compiled 1,771 yards and 19 touchdowns on the ground.

Hansen was the Cyclones’ leading rusher in 2024 and 2025.

“My three years here at Iowa State have been a life changing experience because of the people who make up Ames …” Hansen wrote on Twitter/X. “Thank you to the fans that shook Jack Trice every Saturday and for your belief in this football team.”

Campbell announced on Dec. 5 that he was leaving Iowa State after 10 years as the Cyclones’ head coach. He was quickly succeeded by Washington State’s Jimmy Rogers, who has a big job in front of him to replace the exodus of talent transferring out of Ames.

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Iowa

Iowa Supreme Court overturns doctor’s child sex abuse conviction

Published

17 hours ago

December 23, 2025

Press Room

Iowa Supreme Court overturns doctor’s child sex abuse conviction

The Iowa Supreme Court overturned the sexual abuse conviction of a West Des Moines doctor.
The court ruled that allowing the child victim to testify via one-way video violated the Iowa Constitution.
This decision is one of several that has set Iowa apart from other states on the issue of remote testimony.

The Iowa Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of a West Des Moines doctor found guilty of sexually abusing a child, ruling that allowing the victim to testify via one-way video violated the Iowa Constitution.

The court on Tuesday, Dec. 23, reversed the conviction of Lynn Melvin Lindaman, a longtime central Iowa surgeon who practiced at the Lindaman Orthopaedics clinic in West Des Moines before he was charged in 2023 with second-degree sexual abuse. The case was remanded for a new trial.

The decision is the latest in a string of rulings that have set Iowa apart as the only state in the country whose highest court has barred one-way video testimony in criminal trials, even in cases involving child victims.

Those decisions already have begun reshaping prosecutions across the state and have prompted lawmakers to launch the process of amending the Iowa Constitution. The change would ultimately require voter approval.

Lindaman, now 75, was convicted after a jury trial in Polk County. Prosecutors alleged that on June 26, 2023, he committed a sex act in Ankeny against a child under the age of 10. A second count of sexual abuse was dismissed prior to trial. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison, with a mandatory minimum of 42½ years because of a prior sexual predatory offense in 1976. He also faced a separate and now-dismissed civil lawsuit from an Iowa woman who claimed he sexually assaulted her in 1975.

The Iowa Offender Search still lists Lindaman as in custody of the Iowa Medical & Classification Center.

On appeal, Lindaman argued that his constitutional rights were violated when the district court allowed the child to testify from another room via one-way closed-circuit television, rather than from the witness stand in the courtroom.

“Today’s decision from the Iowa Supreme Court is an important win for Lynn Lindaman and a major step toward a fair result,” said Lucas Taylor, the attorney representing Lindaman. “Although the court did not rule in our favor on every issue, this ruling recognizes serious errors in the prior proceedings and gives Mr. Lindaman the chance to present his defense to a new jury.”

In a 4-3 ruling issued earlier this year in State v. White, the Iowa Supreme Court agreed with that argument, holding that one-way video testimony violates the confrontation clause of the Iowa Constitution. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice David May said that “when the accused and the witness are prevented from seeing each other, there is no face-to-face confrontation, and the Iowa Constitution is not satisfied.”

The ruling came despite U.S. Supreme Court precedent allowing such testimony and laws in many other states permitting it. Under the Iowa statute the court overturned, judges had been allowed to authorize remote testimony by minors, or witnesses with mental illnesses or disabilities, if a judge found that “trauma caused by testifying in the physical presence of the defendant … would impair the minor’s ability to communicate.”

The White decision arose from an Osceola County case, but its effects have since spread and courts across Iowa have begun hearing challenges from defendants convicted in cases where one-way video testimony was used.

Following the ruling, Lynn Hicks, a spokesman for the Polk County Attorney’s Office, said at least five Polk County defendants convicted under similar circumstances could be entitled to new trials.

One of those defendants, Michael Dunbar, already has received a new trial. Dunbar was resentenced after the victim testified in person from the witness stand, and the court again imposed a life sentence.

Dissent fuels push to amend Iowa Constitution

The State v. White ruling has drawn sharp criticism from prosecutors and state leaders, including Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, who has argued the decision unnecessarily traumatizes child victims.

Bird has proposed a constitutional amendment to allow children to testify remotely in certain cases. The measure has passed both chambers of the Legislature once and must pass again before going to voters in a statewide referendum.

“Children shouldn’t be forced to testify at arm’s length from their abusers, and many kids can’t. This opinion shows how important it is to restore protections for a child victim to testify remotely,” Bird said in a Tuesday statement to the Des Moines Register. “Our office will continue to fight for a constitutional amendment to ensure kids are protected and abusers are brought to justice. We are grateful our effort has received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Iowa Legislature.”

Justice Thomas D. Waterman, writing in a dissent in the opinion issued Tuesday, rejected the majority’s historical interpretation of the confrontation clause.

“Thunder comes during rainstorms; it does not follow that thunder requires rain. That video testimony was not used in 1871 tells us more about technology than it does about constitutional interpretation,” Waterman wrote.

He also said there is “no historical evidence that the framers of the Iowa Constitution intended a different meaning for confrontation rights than the Sixth Amendment,” and warned that the majority was reading requirements into Iowa’s Constitution that do not exist in its text.

Nick El Hajj is a reporter at the Register. He can be reached at nelhajj@gannett.com. Follow him on X at @nick_el_hajj.

This story was updated to add new information and to correct an inaccuracy.

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