Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-1068 Filed August 19, 2026 _______________ State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Dustin Lee Heckethorn, Defendant–Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Davis County, The Honorable Dustin Hite, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Erin M. Carr of Carr Law Firm, Des Moines, attorney for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Joseph D. Ferrentino, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee. _______________ Considered without oral argument by Schumacher, P.J., and Ahlers and Badding, JJ. Opinion by Badding, J. 1 BADDING, Judge. Dustin Heckethorn was charged with sexually abusing his sixteen- year-old daughter. Before trial, the district court granted Heckethorn’s motion in limine to exclude any reference to the daughter’s past allegations of sexual abuse by Heckethorn. When the daughter later suggested to the jury that the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services and law enforcement had been involved with the family in the past, Heckethorn moved for a mistrial, arguing this testimony violated the pretrial ruling. The court disagreed and denied the motion. The jury returned a verdict finding Heckethorn guilty of third-degree sexual abuse, incest, indecent exposure, and lascivious conduct with a minor. Heckethorn appeals, challenging the district court’s denial of his mistrial motion and the sufficiency of the evidence supporting his convictions. I. Background Facts and Proceedings Dustin Heckethorn’s daughter, C.H., did not have an ideal childhood. She lived with her mother until she was in first grade, when she was removed and placed with Heckethorn, his wife Sally, and their son. C.H.’s half-sister, G.H.,1 also lived there part-time. Although there was a custody agreement between her parents, C.H. said that it was not followed and that she “never really saw [her mother] that much.” C.H. testified that around her sixteenth birthday, in the spring of 2022, Heckethorn began sexually abusing her. The first incident occurred in the basement of their family home. C.H. recalled: 1 Heckethorn is the father of both girls, but they have different mothers. G.H. alternated weeks between Heckethorn’s house and her mother’s house. 2 [Heckethorn] was just talking to me, just about weird things, just talking about how he doesn’t want to have sex with his wife. . . . . . . I had gotten in trouble previously for having a phone and talking to a guy, and he had told me that he didn’t care if I wanted to have sex and that he would take me somewhere if I wanted to have sex and that he would just tell Sally that we were going to the gas station. It was just weird things of that nature that he was talking about. Sometime after that conversation in the basement, C.H. said that Heckethorn woke her up early in the morning to talk to her in their living room. Heckethorn’s wife was at work, and their son was sleeping. G.H. was not home. Although C.H. didn’t remember the details of their conversation, she recalled that it made her nervous. She testified that her father “could tell that I was nervous, so he handed me his pipe with marijuana and told me to smoke, so I took a hit off his pipe and then gave it back.” After smoking from the pipe, Heckethorn reclined on the couch wearing only his long johns. C.H. testified: At some point his penis . . . came out on his pants and was sitting there. I was shielding my eyes, and he had asked me to give him a hand job. I had told him, “No. I don’t really know what that is.” He told me he was going to show me. I told him, “I don’t want to do it.” I was holding my eyes because I didn’t want to see. Heckethorn then reached underneath a couch cushion and pulled out an outfit that he wanted C.H. to wear. C.H. testified that it was a pair of Heckethorn’s jeans that he had cut to look “like a thong” and a cropped t-shirt with a deep v-neck and frayed bottom. C.H. refused to put the outfit on and said that she needed to get ready for work. C.H. testified that on her way to her bedroom, Heckethorn called her back “and asked me to take his cell phone back to my bedroom and take pictures of myself naked and bring it back to him.” C.H. refused that request too and woke her little brother up while she got ready for work. Later, she found the clothes in a box by their 3 trashcan. C.H. pulled the clothes out and took pictures of them with her school laptop. She also showed them to her sister, G.H. The last incident occurred in the family’s camper, where Heckethorn sometimes slept. Once again, Heckethorn woke C.H. up early in the morning while his wife was at work and their son was sleeping. He told C.H. to meet him in the camper. Worried by the previous incidents, C.H. asked her sister to go with her. But Heckethorn ordered G.H. back into the house. Alone with C.H., he told her that she was in trouble for stealing some of his marijuana. C.H. testified that Heckethorn then gave her three punishments to choose from: “to stand in front of him and twerk” while he masturbated, to allow him to “touch my butt,” or to “get whipped with this paddle five times on my bare butt.” C.H. chose to let Heckethorn “touch my butt for five minutes.” Heckethorn had C.H. lean over the camper’s dining room table while he grabbed and rubbed her butt. At first, C.H. was wearing underwear, spandex shorts, and sweatpants, but Heckethorn made C.H. drop her sweatpants to her ankles because “[i]t was too much clothing,” and “[h]e couldn’t feel.” Then he made her sit on his lap, with her back facing him. C.H. testified, “He continued to rub my butt, and then he had started to rub underneath on my vagina.” That lasted for a few minutes. C.H. testified that Heckethorn then told me to stand up for a second, and I did. As I was standing up, he tried to pull my pants down really fast, including my underwear. My butt was out for a split minute, and he told me, “Just you will have your pants down, not me. It will be fine.” I just kept saying, “Please, no, Dad. Please, no.” C.H. began crying, and Heckethorn said, “You’re crying, so I know you’re not going to smoke marijuana again.” He didn’t say anything else, but C.H. testified that he “was kind of groaning and stuff.” C.H. testified that after she 4 pulled her pants back up, “that was pretty much the end of it,” and they went about their day “kind of like nothing happened.” Later that night, C.H. told her sister what had occurred in the camper. She also emailed her mother and told her about the living room and camper incidents. In those emails, C.H. asked her mother not to tell anyone, saying: “MOM IF U CAL[L] DHS I WILL BE ANGRY, me and [G.H.] are figuring a way to get this handled in a way I wont be scared to tell anyone and so that I get removed from the home [imme]diately. so please don’t tell dhs or no one okay???” Against C.H.’s wishes, her mother called law enforcement. Officers spoke with C.H. twice—once at her workplace and once at Heckethorn’s house. She denied any abuse on both occasions, explaining her mother “makes things up.” C.H.’s mother urged police to continue investigating. C.H.’s mother reported the allegations to the department, and a child protective worker went to the house to speak with the family. Heckethorn and Sally denied the allegations, as did C.H. at first. But when the child protective worker began reading the emails that C.H. had sent to her mother, C.H. confirmed they were true. C.H. told the child protective worker that she had denied the allegations because “she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble.” She then showed the worker the pictures she took of the clothing that Heckethorn had wanted her to wear. The department removed C.H. from the home, and the State charged Heckethorn with third-degree sexual abuse, incest, indecent exposure, and lascivious acts with a child. After years of continuances, the case proceeded to trial in February 2025. The district court granted Heckethorn’s pretrial motion in limine to 5 exclude allegations of sexual abuse that C.H. had made against her father in 2019 and early 2022 because the State had not given proper notice of its intent to offer evidence of those prior bad acts. See Iowa R. Evid. 5.404(b)(3). During the State’s direct examination of C.H., Heckethorn objected to the following exchange: Q. So with what you just explained here this morning, why did you tell the officer that everything was okay? A. That’s just something we’ve always had to do growing up. If DHS or police officers—you just tell them everything is fine. Q. And what do you mean that that’s what we have to do? Why do you say that? A. A lot of the times we were told to tell DHS or police officers, “Tell them everything is good. Everything is fine,” stuff like that. Q. And who has taught you that? A. Dad or Sally. Q. Okay. So that’s something that you—that you believe you learned from your dad— A. Yes. Q. —or Sally? A. Yes. Q. And if you do that—if you do say that everything is okay, do you have any kind of a consequence—well, any kind of a reward for doing that? A. No, but I believe one time we were given, like— DEFENSE COUNSEL: Objection, Your Honor. I think [the prosecutor] is getting dangerously close to some things that can cause some problems here later on down the road. PROSECUTOR: I can strike that. THE COURT: Okay. . . . ask another question. At a break in the trial a few minutes later, Heckethorn moved for a mistrial. Defense counsel argued that the State’s questions and C.H.’s testimony violated the motion in limine because it “automatically generates a situation where it puts into the jury’s minds that there has been prior DHS involvement.” That argument was renewed in a written motion, which the 6 district court denied the next day. The court reasoned that there was “no discussion about prior DHS involvement. That is a jump that the defense is making that isn’t necessarily one that the jury—based on what has been in the record so far—would make.” The court offered to provide the jury with a cautionary instruction, but Heckethorn did not request one. At the end of the trial, the jury found Heckethorn guilty as charged. Heckethorn appeals, challenging the denial of his motion for a mistrial and the sufficiency of the evidence on all four counts. II. Analysis A. Motion for Mistrial Heckethorn claims the district court abused its discretion in denying his motion for a mistrial because the State violated the court’s pretrial ruling that excluded evidence about Heckethorn’s prior bad acts. The State challenges error preservation, contesting the timing and sufficiency of Heckethorn’s mistrial motion. We choose to bypass those error preservation concerns and address the merits of Heckethorn’s claim, which we review for an abuse of discretion. State v. Brown, 5 N.W.3d 611, 614–15 (Iowa 2024). Heckethorn argues: Once the jury heard testimony that indicated C.H. had previously been involved with DHS and law enforcement, and “taught” to conceal allegations of abuse and that “consequences” or “rewards” were associated with disclosure, the implication was unmistakable: [Heckethorn] had previously been investigated by DHS or law enforcement—precisely the type of character inference Rule 5.404(b)(1) prohibits. The State counters by arguing that C.H.’s testimony did not violate the court’s ruling because she did not discuss the sexual abuse allegations from 7 2019 or early 2022. According to the State, suggesting past involvement by the department is not the same as the prior bad acts evidence excluded by the court, and it did not necessarily have “anything to do with Heckethorn” since the jury knew that C.H.’s mother had been involved with the department. We agree. After testifying “[t]hat’s just something we’ve always had to do growing up,” C.H. limited her explanation to saying, “A lot of the times we were told to tell DHS or police officers, ʻTell them everything is good. Everything is fine,’ stuff like that.” She did not provide any further detail and made no mention of the past sexual abuse allegations. As the court reasoned in denying Heckethorn’s motion, While I understand where the defendant is believing this is going and the dots that the defendant believes that the jury can connect, I don’t think that’s—I don’t think that’s possible. The jury has no indication. While the defense knows about the prior accusations, there’s nothing on the record that would—that I believe that the jury could find from the questions that were asked about any prior involvement of DHS. “[W]e give district courts ʻconsiderable discretion in ruling upon motions for mistrial, since they are present throughout the trial and are in a better position than the reviewing court to gauge the effect of the matter in question on the jury.’” Id. at 615 (citation omitted). Ordinarily, an abuse of discretion is found only “where there is no support in the record for the trial court’s determination.” Id. (citation omitted). The question “is whether the trial court was clearly unreasonable in concluding an impartial verdict could be reached notwithstanding the witness’s testimony.” State v. Newell, 710 N.W.2d 6, 32 (Iowa 2006). The court did not reach an unreasonable conclusion here. 8 The challenged testimony was isolated, vague, and cumulative to other evidence in the record about the family’s involvement with the department. See id. (affirming the denial of a mistrial motion where the “reference to drug charges occurred only once, and there were no questions that elaborated on this information”); accord Brown, 5 N.W.3d at 615. And the court offered to give a curative instruction, which Heckethorn declined. See State v. Dominguez-Schiesl, No. 21-1402, 2023 WL 5949177, at *6 (Iowa Ct. App. Sep. 13, 2023) (noting a defendant’s decision to forgo a curative instruction undermined his claim of prejudice on appeal). When the testimony is considered “in the context of the entire trial and all the properly admitted evidence,” we find that the court reasonably concluded it “did not prevent the defendant from receiving a fair trial with impartial jurors.” Newell, 710 N.W.2d at 33. B. Sufficiency of the Evidence Heckethorn challenges the sufficiency of the evidence supporting all four convictions. We review this claim “for the correction of errors at law, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the State.” State v. Sievers, 20 N.W.3d 203, 207 (Iowa 2025). “This includes making legitimate inferences and presumptions that may fairly and reasonably be deduced from the record evidence.” Brown, 5 N.W.3d at 615–16 (cleaned up). “Our review is highly deferential to the jury’s verdict, and we affirm the jury’s verdict when the verdict is supported by substantial evidence.” Sievers, 20 N.W.3d at 207 (cleaned up). Evidence is substantial when “it can convince a rational jury that the defendant is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. (citation omitted). Before addressing the evidence supporting Heckethorn’s convictions, we first dispose of his overarching argument that C.H.’s testimony was not 9 credible and that it was uncorroborated by other evidence. He contends “there is a lack of physical evidence, no forensic evidence, no eyewitness testimony, no contemporaneous report, and no recovered clothing or other tangible proof connecting the defendant to any sexual misconduct.” But, as Heckethorn also recognizes, a victim’s “testimony itself is sufficient to constitute substantial evidence” of guilt. State v. Mathis, 971 N.W.2d 514, 518 (Iowa 2022); see also Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.21(3) (“Corroboration of the testimony of victims shall not be required.”). “Iowa law abandoned the corroboration requirement more than fifty years ago.” State v. Lang, 30 N.W.3d 757, 764 (Iowa Ct. App. 2025) (en banc). Put simply, Heckethorn’s argument that C.H.’s testimony “is not credible enough to convince a rational fact finder of his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt is unavailing for sufficiency of the evidence purposes.” State v. Donahue, 957 N.W.2d 1, 10–11 (Iowa 2021). With that nonstarter out of the way, we turn to the challenged elements for each conviction. 1. Third-Degree Sexual Abuse and Incest For both the third-degree sexual abuse and incest counts, the jury was instructed the State had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Heckethorn performed a sex act with C.H. Heckethorn’s only complaint about that common element is that C.H.’s testimony detailing the “camper incident” was uncorroborated. But, as we stated above, corroboration is not required. See Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.21(3); Mathis, 971 N.W.2d at 518. Heckethorn also claims that his sexual abuse conviction “cannot stand” because C.H. did not testify that the sex act was performed against her will. However, that is a legitimate inference from her testimony. C.H. 10 testified that Heckethorn presented the idea of rubbing her butt as a punishment and that she was uncomfortable selecting that option but felt she had no other choice. See Donahue, 957 N.W.2d at 11 (noting that “the focal point of the crime of sexual abuse is consent,” which “turns on the intentions and mental state of the victim” (citation omitted)). She also testified that she cried and pleaded, “Please, no, Dad. Please no,” after Heckethorn pulled down her pants and underwear. “Taking the evidence in the light most favorable to the State,” id., a rational fact finder could be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that Heckethorn’s actions were against C.H.’s will. 2. Indecent Exposure The jury was instructed that to find Heckethorn guilty of indecent exposure, the State had to prove the following beyond a reasonable doubt: 1. On or about April 1, 2022, through June 24, 2022, the defendant . . . exposed his genitals or pubes to C.H. who was not then the defendant’s spouse. 2. The defendant did so with the specific intent to arouse or satisfy the sexual desire of the defendant. 3. C.H. was offended by the defendant’s conduct. 4. The defendant knew or reasonably should have known that the act was offensive to C.H. Heckethorn challenges each of these elements. For the first two, he contends that “C.H.’s testimony established only speculation regarding [Heckethorn’s] knowledge” that his penis was exposed and that he exposed it with the specific intent to arouse or satisfy his sexual desire. But, again, those were legitimate inferences from the evidence. C.H. testified, “At some point his penis . . . came out on his pants and was sitting there. I was shielding my eyes, and he had asked me to give him a hand job.” See State v. Jorgensen, 11 758 N.W.2d 830, 837 (Iowa 2008) (“The requisite intent to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person can be inferred from an accused’s conduct, remarks, and all surrounding circumstances.”). As for the third and fourth elements, C.H. testified that she was “holding [her] eyes” because she “didn’t want to see” her father’s penis, which suggests that she was offended by Heckethorn’s conduct. Drawing from C.H.’s reaction—and “applying common mores”—a rational fact finder could conclude that Heckethorn “knew or reasonably should have known” that exposing his penis was offensive to C.H. Id. Substantial evidence supports this conviction. 3. Lascivious Conduct with a Minor For the last count, the court instructed the jury that to find Heckethorn guilty of lascivious conduct with a minor, the State needed to prove—among other unchallenged elements—that Heckethorn “forced, persuaded, or coerced C.H., with or without her consent, to disrobe or partially disrobe” and that he “engaged in such conduct with the specific intent to arouse or satisfy [his] sexual desires.” In arguing these elements were not met, Heckethorn only discusses the living room incident when he exposed his penis to C.H. and asked her to put on the cut-off jeans and cropped t-shirt. But, as the State argued at trial and again on appeal, Heckethorn committed this offense when he pulled down C.H.’s pants and underwear in the camper. See State v. Steinhelper, No. 24-0163, 2025 WL 409382, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 5, 2025) (“Under the plain language and clear meaning [of ] section 709.14(1), ʻdisrobe’ includes the act of an adult removing a minor’s clothing.”). C.H. testified that her “butt was out for a split minute” and that Heckethorn told her— after groping her butt and vagina, having her sit on his lap, and “groaning”— “Just you will have your pants down, not me. It will be fine.” Viewing this 12 evidence in the light most favorable to the State, we conclude that substantial evidence supports the jury’s verdict finding Heckethorn guilty of lascivious conduct with a minor. III. Conclusion For these reasons, we affirm the district court’s denial of Heckethorn’s motion for mistrial and his convictions for third-degree sexual abuse, incest, indecent exposure, and lascivious conduct with a minor. AFFIRMED. 13