Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-1264 Filed September 2, 2026 _______________ Shane Romine Borrego, Applicant–Appellant, v. State of Iowa, Respondent–Appellee. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Jasper County, The Honorable Terry Rickers, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Denise M. Gonyea of McKelvie Law Office, Grinnell, attorney for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Genevieve Reinkoester, Assistant Attorney General, attorneys for appellee. _______________ Considered without oral argument by Greer, P.J., and Badding and Sandy, JJ. Opinion by Sandy, J. 1 SANDY, Judge. Shane Borrego appeals from the district court’s summary disposition of his application for postconviction relief. Borrego contends there are “genuine issues of material fact” that should have precluded summary disposition. We affirm. BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS In April 2021, Borrego was charged with first-degree murder and going armed with intent. Borrego pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of second-degree murder in January 2022, with the going-armed-with-intent charge being dismissed by the State. He was sentenced to a fifty-year term of incarceration with a seventy-percent mandatory minimum. Procedendo was issued in February. Borrego timely appealed but later voluntarily dismissed that appeal. Borrego then appealed again in January 2023, but that appeal was dismissed as untimely. In January 2024, Borrego applied for postconviction relief, arguing that (1) his conviction or sentence is in violation of the U.S. Constitution or laws of Iowa; (2) there are material facts not previously presented or heard that require vacation of his conviction; and (3) the conviction or sentence are otherwise subject to collateral attack. The application also contended that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his attorneys had never tried a murder case. The State moved for summary disposition, directly contradicting Borrego’s claims regarding his attorneys’ experience—one attorney had tried forty murder or attempted-murder cases, and the other had tried twenty-four such cases. Borrego resisted that motion through an “affidavit” by asserting that he has “an IQ score below 90” and “is not able to read or write well.” He also 2 claimed to struggle with schizophrenia and “several different disorders,” which were not investigated prior to accepting his guilty plea. Borrego further argued his attorneys failed to communicate with him and did not inform him of the mandatory minimum sentence. And he asserted that he did not remember the killing, opining that he “may have been drugged” beforehand. Although Borrego’s affidavit was unsworn, the district court accepted its submission into the record upon Borrego’s attestation under oath that the affidavit was true. Following a hearing, the district court granted the State’s motion for summary disposition. The court decided that insofar as Borrego was alleging ineffective assistance of counsel, his only contention on that claim was “that he was assigned inexperienced defense attorneys who had never tried a murder case.” The district court concluded that this allegation was “spurious,” as the State had presented reliable and unrebutted evidence that Borrego’s attorneys were very experienced in criminal trials—noting that the attorneys had even “appeared before [that] court to try murder cases.” The court further incorporated the State’s resistance into its ruling on Borrego’s other claims. In its resistance, the State explained that Borrego had not provided evidence for his claim that his IQ was too low to allow for a voluntary and intelligent plea, the plea hearing transcript showed that Borrego directly confirmed he could read and write, Borrego had provided no documentation supporting his mental-health diagnoses or issues, and Borrego failed to describe how phone conversations, rather than “regular in- person contact” with his attorneys, amounted to ineffective assistance. Borrego was also informed via his written plea and spoken colloquy that his sentence had a seventy-percent mandatory minimum. Borrego now appeals. 3 STANDARD OF REVIEW “We generally review postconviction proceedings, including summary dismissals of postconviction-relief applications, for errors at law.” Moon v. State, 911 N.W.2d 137, 142 (Iowa 2018). Our standard of review in summary dispositions of postconviction-relief applications is the same as in summary- judgment cases. Id. Summary disposition is granted “if the pleadings, depositions, answers to interrogatories, and admissions on file, together with the affidavits, if any, show . . . there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and . . . the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Id. (quoting Iowa R. Civ. P. 1.981(3)). We view the record in “the light most favorable to the nonmoving party” and draw “all legitimate inferences from the record” in the nonmoving party’s favor. Id. DISCUSSION To dismiss a postconviction-relief petition on a motion for summary disposition, the moving party must be entitled to judgment as a matter of law due to the lack of any genuine issue of material fact. See Summage v. State, 579 N.W.2d 821, 822 (Iowa 1998). When claiming ineffective assistance of counsel, the petitioner must show “(1) counsel failed to perform an essential duty; and (2) prejudice resulted.” State v. Maxwell, 743 N.W.2d 185, 195 (Iowa 2008) (citing Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 687 (1984)). Borrego argues the district court erred in determining there were no genuine issues of material fact. He contends that by arguing in resistance, the State conceded that there were factual disputes and that he need not prove ineffective assistance to survive summary disposition—he need only show a genuine issue of material fact. 4 We begin with the observation that it is difficult for us to ascertain exactly which challenges Borrego is renewing from below. Indeed, it is unclear what specific claims Borrego initially raised in his original petition. Borrego’s brief primarily articulates law applying to claims of ineffective assistance of counsel. So we assume that all the claims he raised in his petition—or at least how he raises and frames them on appeal—are in the context of his counsel’s ineffective assistance. Borrego asserts that the district court applied the wrong standard and essentially required him to prove ineffective assistance of counsel for his petition to survive summary disposition. He misunderstands what is required at the summary disposition stage, as he must “‘set forth specific facts showing the existence of a genuine issue for trial’ in response to the State’s properly supported motion.” Armstrong v. State, No. 21-1132, 2022 WL 2824750, at *4 (Iowa Ct. App. July 20, 2022) (quoting Hlubek v. Pelecky, 701 N.W.2d 93, 95 (Iowa 2005)). And he must affirm through affidavit or testimony that he possesses or can obtain evidence establishing the grounds for his petition. See Zamora v. State, No. 23-1407, 2025 WL 52834, at *3 (Iowa Ct. App. Jan. 9, 2025). Thus, while his evidence need not be in an admissible form at the postconviction hearing, he did need to show he could present evidence with admissible content to support his claims. See Kindig v. Newman, 966 N.W.2d 310, 322-23 (Iowa Ct. App. 2021). In his petition, Borrego made claims about his mental-health history, his IQ, and his counsel’s failure to investigate his case. But Borrego never explained exactly how he believes his counsel failed to investigate, let alone how such failure prejudiced him. He also never claimed to possess documentation or other evidence of his claims that he possesses a low IQ or lacks the ability to read or write well. Such evidence would be important to 5 establish considering that, during the plea proceedings, Borrego expressed an ability to read and write and confirmed both in writing and verbally that he understood his plea and the sentencing requirements. And the claims Borrego makes in his affidavit differ significantly from the claims he raised in his application—that his counsel’s inexperience caused their ineffectiveness—claims he seems to now at least implicitly concede are unfounded. Because of that, the district court did not err in framing Borrego’s claims in the context of his counsel’s inexperience. Borrego did not amend his application to add additional claims. So the district court was correct to conclude that there was no possible avenue of success for Borrego’s claim that his counsel “[h]ad never [tried] a murder case and had no idea what so ever as to what they were doing.” We thus affirm the district court’s order granting the State’s motion for summary disposition of Borrego’s postconviction-relief application. AFFIRMED. 6