Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-0788 Filed August 19, 2026 _______________ State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Kyle Robert Hough, Defendant–Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Woodbury County, The Honorable Tod Deck, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Grant C. Gangestad of Gourley, Rehkemper & Lindholm PLC, West Des Moines, attorney for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Katherine Wenman, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee. _______________ Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ. Opinion by Buller, J. 1 BULLER, Judge. Kyle Hough appeals his convictions for sexual abuse and lascivious acts with a child. He asks us to reverse the district court ruling declining to grant him a new trial. Applying a deferential standard of review, we affirm. Our review in this appeal is tightly constrained. Our role “is limited to a review of the exercise of discretion by the trial court, not of the underlying question of whether the verdict is against the weight of the evidence.” State v. Reeves, 670 N.W.2d 199, 203 (Iowa 2003). We reverse only where “the district court exercised its discretion on grounds or for reasons clearly untenable or to an extent clearly unreasonable.” Id. at 202. Because the underlying merits are not before us, much of the briefing—how believable was the victim, how material were alleged inconsistencies—is misplaced. With our limited role in mind, we turn briefly to the facts of the offense. Hough and his then-wife adopted the victim. Hough and the mother later divorced, and the victim split time between their homes. The victim eventually disclosed to her mother that Hough had been “doing sexual things” to her from when she was six until when she was ten. She said Hough “stuck his thing her mouth and in her butt once.” At trial, the victim described Hough directing her to masturbate his penis “fortyish” times (telling her to do it “harder,” “keep going,” and “stroke” his penis), placed his hand on her vaginal area and his penis on her mouth multiple times each, and sometimes ejaculated into her mouth and told her to swallow. The victim remembered her dog—Honey—barking, that she didn’t want to touch Hough, that she cried, and that his “private part” was “gross and, like, hairy.” She also described Hough showing her pornography—he said to “copy them”—and attempting to penetrate her anally with his penis. According to the victim, the anal assault happened in a bathroom with a gray 2 rug. Hough told the victim not to tell anyone, that it was their “little secret,” and that he would hurt the victim’s mother if the victim reported the abuse. A Woodbury County jury found Hough guilty as charged: one count of sexual abuse in the second degree, a class “B” felony in violation of Iowa Code section 709.3(1)(b) (2017), and lascivious acts with a child, a class “C” felony in violation of section 709.8(1)(b). Hough moved for a new trial, which the district court denied before sentencing him to concurrent prison terms. Hough seeks to relitigate the new-trial ruling because he disagrees with it. Because we cannot revisit the merits of the ruling, we generously construe the briefing and understand Hough to allege an abuse of discretion on three aspects of the ruling: evidence about the rug, the credibility of the victim, and an alleged lack of corroborating evidence. As to the first, Hough’s argument is premised on post-trial claims about the bathroom rug’s date of manufacture. His motion for new trial was predicated solely on weight of the evidence—not newly discovered evidence. But he included a footnote with a hyperlink to the mat manufacturer’s website, apparently to support his claim the mat was not in the home during the relevant time period. Whatever Hough’s post-trial hyperlink footnote may be, it is not evidence. It does not appear to have been considered by the district court in ruling on the motion for new trial, and we do not consider it either. In our view, it is another example of outside-the-record materials being injected into the courts outside the fact-finding function. See Iowa R. App. P. 6.801 (defining the record on appeal); State v. Lloyd, No. 25-0280, 2026 WL 2110744, at *6 (Iowa Ct. App. July 22, 2026) (collecting cases). To the extent we can consider Hough’s belated reply-brief request we take judicial notice of the website, we decline. An internet search is not a substitute for the truth-seeking function of litigation. And more broadly, we 3 discern no error in the district court’s handling of this issue to the extent it touches on weight of the evidence. Given the verdict returned here, a district court would have discretion to deny a new trial even if Hough had partially undermined one out of forty-plus credibly-described acts of sexual abuse. Second, Hough claims we should reverse because the victim’s testimony was allegedly inconsistent. The district court disagreed, and that court was in a superior position to evaluate credibility. Substituting our judgment is exactly the kind of review we are forbidden to conduct. Reeves, 670 N.W.2d at 203. And even if we were allowed to do so, we wouldn’t: what Hough claims are inconsistencies are largely mistaken dates (difficult for children and many adult witnesses), differences in word choice, and collateral matters. As our supreme court put it, “A person should not be able to escape punishment for such a disgusting crime because he has chosen to take carnal knowledge of an infant too young to testify clearly as to the time and details of such shocking activity.” State v. Rankin, 181 N.W.2d 169, 172 (Iowa 1970). Third, Hough asserts the lack of corroborating physical evidence justifies displacing the district court’s ruling. We disagree. “Iowa law abandoned the corroboration requirement more than fifty years ago. And for good reason: This requirement for corroborating evidence plays on long-held myths that rape victims—and women more generally—cannot be trusted.” State v. Lang, 30 N.W.3d 757, 764 (Iowa Ct. App. 2025) (en banc) (cleaned up). While the lack of corroborating evidence may be one consideration among many when a district court rules on a motion for new trial, we cannot say the district court abused its discretion declining to grant a new trial here. AFFIRMED. 4