Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 24-1647 Filed October 21, 2026 _______________ State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Jamodd Amaul Sallis, Defendant–Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Black Hawk County, The Honorable Michelle M. Wagner, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS _______________ Kent A. Simmons (argued), Bettendorf, attorney for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Aaron Rogers (argued), Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee. _______________ Heard at oral argument by Schumacher, P.J., Sandy, J., and Doyle, S.J. Opinion by Sandy, J. 1 SANDY, Judge. After a three-day trial, a jury convicted youth pastor Jamodd Sallis of lascivious conduct with a teenage member of his flock. Sallis was then sentenced to a year in jail, set to run consecutively to his sentence in another case. Sallis appeals his conviction and sentence, arguing the trial court admitted improper expert testimony regarding grooming and the sentencing court abused its discretion by running his sentence consecutively to his sentence in the other case without providing a specific reason for the decision. Upon our review, we affirm the trial court’s admission of the expert testimony but remand for resentencing due to the omission of an explicit reason for the consecutive sentence as required by our rules of criminal procedure. BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS Sallis began his relationship with the fourteen-year-old victim, T.N., in August 2019 after meeting her family at the church where he worked as the youth minister. From there, Sallis’s family and T.N.’s family began spending time together and T.N. started visiting Sallis’s home to play with his two daughters. As the families spent more time together, Sallis developed a relationship with T.N. where they would often talk to and text each other, watch movies together, and T.N. began calling Sallis “Uncle Jamie.” This relationship progressed to the point where T.N. would spend nights at Sallis’s house under the guise of having a sleepover with Sallis’s children. On multiple occasions, T.N. testified that she undressed in front of Sallis and he touched her breasts. At trial, she revealed that the two had intercourse. The victim eventually reported the encounters to her mother, who then contacted law enforcement. Sallis was charged with lascivious conduct with a minor in violation of Iowa Code section 709.14(3) (2019). 2 Issues arose during trial when the State called Miranda Kracke, the forensic interviewer with the Child Protection Center who interviewed T.N., as an expert witness to testify about the forensic interview process and about grooming behaviors generally. Sallis objected to this testimony, claiming that any testimony about grooming would be an attempt to “mirror our situation and seek to explain our situation and therefore indirectly vouch for [the victim’s] credibility.” The State disagreed with Sallis’s characterization, stating that Kracke’s testimony was not a method of vouching for the victim’s credibility but an explanation of Sallis’s behavior. The court overruled Sallis’s objection, reasoning that under Iowa caselaw, generalized expert testimony on grooming is admissible and does not amount to credibility vouching. When called to the stand, Kracke explained her credentials and the forensic interview process, and gave the following testimony regarding grooming: Q. What does “grooming” mean? A. So, typically in the work that I do, grooming is often described as the process of desensitization and trust building, typically then to gain access for sexual contact. Q. So, what would be examples of grooming behaviors by offenders? A. So in the work that I do, while I won’t be making a determination if grooming occurred, I have been part of cases where grooming was a concern. And things that have been described over time by multiple children who I’ve talked with in those types of cases, have talked about things like conversations about sex happening, maybe jokes about sex, or being exposed to videos of a sexual nature, that then kind of escalate to maybe viewing pornography together or different things like that. Also, just talking about touch over time becoming—maybe starting out as things like hugs or back rubs, but then over time it becomes more sexual in nature. Q. So there you are talking about grooming of the actual victim of the sex offense. Is there also grooming of other people involved in there? A. So again, in the work that I’m doing, I do often meet with family 3 members—the supporting family members of our patients, and they also, in those cases, have talked about things like trusting that person and that person being a part of their lives, whether they were a family member or nonfamily member. And so, then also sort of that identification, that grooming may have occurred for them, as well. After deliberating, the jury found Sallis guilty of lascivious conduct with a minor. The court ordered Sallis to spend 365 days in jail, to run consecutively to Sallis’s sentence in another case. While the court said on the record that it based the sentence on the facts alleged at trial, Sallis’s age, and his prior criminal history, the court did not provide an explanation for why the sentence was set to run consecutively to Sallis’s sentence in the other case. Now Sallis appeals, arguing that the district court erred by admitting Kracke’s expert testimony on grooming and abused its discretion when it ordered the sentence to run consecutively to his other sentence without providing a reason. DISCUSSION I. Expert Testimony Sallis begins by claiming the district court abused its discretion by admitting expert testimony from the forensic interviewer about grooming as it indirectly vouched for the victim’s credibility. We review evidentiary rulings such as the admission of expert testimony for abuse of discretion. State v. Buelow, 951 N.W.2d 879, 884 (Iowa 2020). The admission of expert testimony in a criminal case is governed by Iowa Rule of Evidence 5.702, which allows an expert witness to “testify in the form of an opinion or otherwise if the expert’s scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge will help the trier of fact to understand the 4 evidence or to determine a fact in issue.” But expert testimony is a tool to help the jury reach its verdict, not a replacement for the jury as fact finders. See State v. Baldon, No. 13-0681, 2014 WL 1976885, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. May 14, 2014) (noting that expert testimony “can even embrace an ultimate issue so long as the expert does not express a direct opinion on the guilt[] or innocence of the defendant—that is the exclusive function of the jury”). Expert testimony is often used during child sexual abuse cases to help a jury understand the unusual behavior child victims display after sexual abuse, but the scope of the testimony is necessarily limited. State v. Dudley, 856 N.W.2d 668, 676–77 (Iowa 2014). Our caselaw acknowledges that a “very thin line” exists between admissible general testimony and inadmissible expert testimony that “indirectly vouches for the victim’s credibility, thereby commenting on the defendant’s guilt or innocence.” State v. Jaquez, 856 N.W.2d 663, 666 (Iowa 2014). As summarized by our state’s supreme court: Although we are committed to the liberal view on the admission of psychological evidence, we continue to hold expert testimony is not admissible merely to bolster credibility. Our system of justice vests the jury with the function of evaluating a witness’s credibility. The reason for not allowing this testimony is that a witness’s credibility is not a fact in issue subject to expert opinion. Such opinions not only replace the jury’s function in determining credibility, but the jury can employ this type of testimony as a direct comment on defendant’s guilt or innocence. Moreover, when an expert comments, directly or indirectly, on a witness’s credibility, the expert is giving his or her scientific certainty stamp of approval on the testimony even though an expert cannot accurately opine when a witness is telling the truth. In our system of justice, it is the jury’s function to determine the credibility of a witness. An abuse of discretion occurs when a court allows such testimony. Dudley, 856 N.W.2d at 676–77 (cleaned up). Accordingly, even on permissible subjects, expert opinions must still be sufficiently based on scientific, technical, or other specialized knowledge; testimony by an expert who is in 5 no better position than the jury to evaluate an issue is inadmissible under rule 5.702. State v. Tyler, 867 N.W.2d 136, 164 (Iowa 2015). Despite Sallis’s argument against its admissibility, expert testimony regarding the grooming process, delayed reporting, and other general testimony on relevant psychological symptoms typically found in sexually abused children has been deemed admissible in previous cases. See, e.g., State v. Leedom, 938 N.W.2d 177, 192–93 (Iowa 2020); State v. Payton, 481 N.W.2d 325, 327 (Iowa 1992); State v. Seevanhsa, 495 N.W.2d 354, 357–58 (Iowa Ct. App. 1992). The common theme of admissible expert testimony is generality; admissible expert testimony is limited to the typical behavior of sexually abused children and avoids offering an opinion on the specific facts of the case being tried. See Payton, 481 N.W.2d at 327. We find Kracke’s testimony met the generality necessary for admissibility. Sallis claims the expert’s testimony regarding grooming ran afoul of Dudley, arguing the testimony indirectly vouched for the victim’s credibility. But the expert never opined on the facts of the case, claimed she believed the victim, or said that Sallis’s conduct toward the victim met the definition of grooming. Just because the jury could find Sallis’s conduct met Kracke’s definition of grooming does not make the testimony inadmissible. Additionally, Sallis argues this case is distinguishable from Leedom, which permitted expert testimony regarding grooming because the expert never met or named the child, while Kracke conducted T.N.’s interview and referred to her by name during her testimony. See Leedom, 938 N.W.2d at 193. These distinctions are minor and carry little weight since Kracke still refrained from offering her opinion regarding T.N.’s truthfulness and did not testify that T.N.’s behavior was consistent with the behavior of abuse victims. 6 See id. Because generalized expert testimony is permitted under our precedent, we affirm the trial court’s admission of Kracke’s testimony. II. Consecutive Sentence Sallis also contests the sentencing court’s unexplained imposition of a consecutive rather than concurrent sentence. We review sentencing decisions for correction of errors at law and “will not reverse the decision of the district court absent an abuse of discretion or some defect in the sentencing procedure.” State v. Formaro, 638 N.W.2d 720, 724 (Iowa 2002). Because sentencing decisions “are cloaked with a strong presumption in their favor,” State v. Grandberry, 619 N.W.2d 399, 401 (Iowa 2000), our job is not to second guess those decisions but determine whether they are “unreasonable or based on untenable grounds,” Formaro, 638 N.W.2d at 725. Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.23(2)(g) requires the sentencing court to “state on the record the basis for the sentence imposed and shall particularly state the reason for imposition of any consecutive sentence.” The requirement to state the reason for consecutive sentences applies even when the sentence is set to run consecutively to the sentence of a different case. See State v. Duffield, 16 N.W.3d 298, 304 (Iowa 2025). Here, the court explained that it based the sentence on the facts alleged at trial, Sallis’s age, and his prior criminal history. However, the court failed to explicitly state the reason for the consecutive sentence as required by our rules of criminal procedure. See State v. Hill, 878 N.W.2d 269, 275 (Iowa 2016) (“Sentencing courts should also explicitly state the reasons for imposing a consecutive sentence, although in doing so the court may rely on the same reasons for imposing a sentence of incarceration.”). While our cases used to permit us to infer a consecutive sentence was imposed “as part of an overall sentencing plan,” Hill overruled this practice. Id. Without an 7 expressly stated reason for a consecutive sentence, the sentencing procedure was defective and resentencing is necessary. Id. Accordingly, we vacate the defendant’s sentence in its entirety and remand for a plenary resentencing hearing. Duffield, 16 N.W.3d at 304. AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED FOR FURTHER PROCEEDINGS. 8