Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-1580 Filed October 7, 2026 _______________ State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Javier Anthony Castorena, Defendant–Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Cerro Gordo County, The Honorable Adam D. Sauer, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Chris Raker, East Dubuque, Illinois, attorney for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Martha E. Trout (until withdrawal) and Benjamin Parrott, Assistant Attorneys General, attorneys for appellee. _______________ Considered without oral argument by Ahlers, P.J., and Chicchelly and Langholz, JJ. Opinion by Langholz, J. 1 LANGHOLZ, Judge. After pleading guilty to driving while barred, Javier Castorena was sentenced to sixty days in jail with work-release privileges and a suspended fine. See Iowa Code § 321.561 (2024). He appeals his sentence, arguing that the district court considered an improper factor—information in the minutes of testimony that Castorena gave “a false name” when he was stopped— because the State highlighted that factor when urging the court to impose a sixty-day sentence. But the court did not rely on that factor when explaining the sentence it imposed. Indeed, the court expressly agreed to Castorena’s request that it not consider the factor. That the court ultimately imposed the same sentence urged by the State is not enough to satisfy Castorena’s burden to show that the court nevertheless considered an improper factor. We thus affirm Castorena’s sentence. We review a district court’s discretionary sentencing decisions for an abuse of discretion. See State v. Gordon, 998 N.W.2d 859, 862 (Iowa 2023). This deferential standard of review recognizes that the court’s decision “to impose a particular sentence within the statutory limits is cloaked with a strong presumption in its favor.” State v. Formaro, 638 N.W.2d 720, 724 (Iowa 2002). Still, a district court exceeds its discretion—and we must remand for resentencing—when the court relies on an improper factor, “even if it was merely a secondary consideration.” State v. Schooley, 13 N.W.3d 608, 618 (Iowa 2024) (cleaned up). A defendant must “show that the court was not just merely aware of the factor, but that it relied on the factor in determining its sentence.” State v. McCollaugh, 5 N.W.3d 620, 627 (Iowa 2024). And “[w]e will not draw an inference of improper sentencing considerations which are not apparent from the record.” Formaro, 638 N.W.2d at 725. 2 One such improper factor is “[i]nformation contained in the minutes of testimony” unless the facts “are admitted to or otherwise established as true.” State v. Lovell, 857 N.W.2d 241, 243 (Iowa 2014) (cleaned up); see also State v. Black, 324 N.W.2d 313, 316 (Iowa 1982) (“[W]here portions of the minutes are not necessary to establish a factual basis for the guilty plea, they are denied by the defendant, and they are otherwise unproved, we find no basis to allow the sentencing court to consider and rely on these portions.”). Here, the State recommended that the district court impose a sixty- day jail sentence and a suspended fine. And it gave as “reasons for that recommendation” both that this offense “would be [Castorena’s] sixth Driving While Barred which is substantial in the State’s mind” and that “after he got stopped, he did provide a false name.” Castorena immediately objected “to consideration of anything in the Minutes of Testimony that is not necessary to establish the offense.” The court clarified Castorena was “asking the Court to not consider [the prosecutor’s] comment that your client gave a different name upon being pulled over.” And then the court agreed, saying “I will not consider the comment or anything in the reports about a different name being provided by your client.” Castorena urged the court to impose a “fully suspended” two-year prison sentence and one year of probation instead of requiring him to serve a sixty-day jail sentence. He argued that “probation would allow . . . the judicial system to keep an eye on him to make sure that he doesn’t drive anymore or get into anymore trouble” and would provide “greater protection [to] the community because if he’s on probation for a year, . . . that’s much longer than the time that he would be asked to be placed in the jail.” He also highlighted that “he is the primary caregiver of a veteran and she needs to be monitored 24 hours a day,” which he could not do from jail, even with work 3 release. And he pointed out that he had now obtained a driver’s license and took responsibility by pleading guilty. The court ultimately agreed with the State and imposed a sixty-day jail sentence and a suspended fine. The court thoughtfully explained its reasons for selecting this jail sentence at sentencing: Iowa law requires the Court impose a sentence that considers your need for and potential for rehabilitation, as well as the necessity of protecting the community from further offenses by you and others. A lot of factors go into that being, your age, prior criminal history, driving record, obviously your employment, family circumstances, the nature of this offense, obviously the Court has had a chance to review the exhibit, that is the letter from [the Department of Veterans Affairs] with regards to your employment and your care of [the veteran], [your attorney] . . . has made some really good points with regards to your situation and [the prosecutor] has as well, you know, there’s a lot of factors that go into the decision. One, I’m encouraged that you have obtained the license there so obviously going forward you don’t have these types of issues. You know, so all those are factors that the Court weighs, including like I said, prior history, criminal history, driving record, things of that nature, so . . . with regards to the sentence, I am going to order that you serve a period of 60 days in jail, it will not be suspended, I’m going to give you 30 days in which to serve that sentence. And I am going to grant you work release privileges so that you can hopefully make arrangements with regards to . . . your employment and your care so that you can try to still provide that care to the best you can and give you . . . 30 days in which to try to make those arrangements. True to the court’s ruling on Castorena’s objection, it did not include as one of its reasons for the sentence any information about Castorena giving a false name when he was stopped driving while barred. Even so, Castorena argues that he has overcome the presumption cloaking sentencing decisions because the court imposed the same sentence recommended by the State and “[t]he State’s reliance upon unproven conduct was ‘baked into’ this recommendation.” We disagree. We trust 4 sentencing courts to filter out unproven facts mentioned by a prosecutor— even when the court does not expressly disavow consideration of the factor. See McCollaugh, 5 N.W.3d at 627–28 (holding that the defendant failed to meet his burden to show the court relied on the unproven conduct commented on by the prosecutor when “[i]n its sentencing order, the district court explicitly delineated the reasons for the sentence and never mentioned the comment made by the prosecutor during the sentencing hearing”); State v. Canady, 4 N.W.3d 661, 675–76 (Iowa 2024) (reasoning that “[w]e trust that sentencing courts will ‘filter out’ any improper or irrelevant material in victim-impact statements” or “anything in the minutes of testimony that wasn’t actually proved at trial” unless there is “clear evidence to the contrary”). But here we need not rely just on that trust. The court expressly agreed with Castorena that it would not consider the unproven conduct from the minutes of testimony that was mentioned by the State. And the court’s stated reasons for its selected sentence also backed that up. We will not infer that the court considered an improper factor that it expressly disavowed merely because it agreed with the State’s bottom-line sentencing recommendation for reasons unrelated to that factor. We thus affirm Castorena’s sentence. AFFIRMED. 5