Full Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA _______________ No. 25-1283 Filed September 2, 2026 _______________ State of Iowa, Plaintiff–Appellee, v. Mateo Hilario Lugo, Defendant–Appellant. _______________ Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Polk County, The Honorable Heather Lauber, Judge. _______________ AFFIRMED _______________ Jack Bjornstad of Jack Bjornstad Law Office, Spirit Lake, attorney for appellant. Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Timothy M. Hau, 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. Mateo Lugo entered an Alford plea 1 to possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver. On the day set for sentencing, he moved to withdraw the plea. He did not claim that the plea was involuntary or that the colloquy was deficient. He asked instead that the district court exercise its discretion and permit him to go to trial so that he could continue caring for his ailing mother. The court denied the motion, and Lugo appeals. Because the court applied the correct standard and its ruling rests on tenable grounds, we affirm. BACKGROUND FACTS AND PROCEEDINGS Because Lugo never admitted to the offense under his Alford plea, the facts that follow are drawn from the minutes of testimony, which Lugo agreed could supply the factual basis for his plea. On March 8, 2024, Des Moines police responded to a home where they could hear a man shouting inside. A woman met them at a side door and explained that she and Lugo, her former boyfriend, had been arguing and that the argument had turned physical. After separating the two, the officers learned that the woman had called police a few days earlier and that Lugo had been warned to stay off her property or face a trespass charge. They confirmed the warning and arrested him. Before Lugo was taken to jail, he asked the officers to find his phone and gave them the number so they could call it. The ringing led them to a backpack in the garage. Inside, along with the phone, the officers found three 1 Under North Carolina v. Alford, 400 U.S. 25, 37–38 (1970), a defendant may enter a plea accepting a conviction while still maintaining their innocence on the understanding that the State’s evidence would likely persuade a jury of their guilt. 2 baggies of methamphetamine weighing roughly 16.47 grams together, two glass pipes, and a bong. Lugo told the officers the bag was not his and that nothing in it belonged to him except the phone. The woman said the backpack had once been hers but that Lugo had taken it around the time they separated and kept it since. The State charged Lugo with two felonies: possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver, a class “B” felony, and failure to affix a drug tax stamp, a class “D” felony. The case was resolved by agreement rather than trial. Lugo agreed to enter an Alford plea to a reduced charge, possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver as a class “C” felony, and the State agreed to dismiss the tax stamp count in return. The agreement left both sides free to argue sentencing and obligated the State only to consider recommending probation, a commitment it could withdraw if Lugo picked up new charges before sentencing. Lugo entered the plea on September 24. The court accepted his plea and scheduled sentencing for that November. Sentencing did not proceed as planned. In the months that followed, Lugo’s pretrial release was revoked more than once, and the State filed new charges against him in Polk and Warren Counties during that period. The parties agreed to move the sentencing hearing to January 7, 2025. On the day of that hearing, Lugo moved to withdraw his guilty plea under Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.8(5). He gave two reasons. The first, which he described as his primary reason, was due to his mother. Lugo explained that he had been caring for his seventy-eight-year-old mother in Indianola, that she had recently undergone heart surgery, and that her health left her dependent on him. The second was that he wanted to go to trial on 3 the original charges. He attached a short, handwritten letter from his mother, which read, in full: To whom it may concern: This is a letter about my son Mateo H. Lugo. I think he needs to be put in a rehabilitation to get him off the drugs. I really do not think prison will help him. He needs help. Please. In November I was sick and then in December I had to have a surgery on my heart. I really need someone to be with me. I have no other family out here in Iowa. I am unable to move back to California as I would not be able to afford it. Please take my letter into consideration. The district court held a hearing on the motion and heard from defense counsel, the prosecutor, and Lugo. Counsel was candid that Lugo was not attacking the plea itself. He raised no claim that the colloquy had been deficient or that the plea had been involuntary in any legal sense, and he asked only that the court exercise its discretion and let Lugo proceed to trial so that he could care for his mother. Counsel acknowledged that granting the motion would again expose Lugo to the class “B” charge, the tax stamp count, and the higher bond that came with them. When the court asked whether anything had changed since the plea to alter Lugo’s view of the facts, counsel answered that, in short, it had not. Lugo then spoke for himself. He said that when the plea judge asked whether he was guilty, he had not known how to answer, and that he had gone ahead with the Alford plea because the offer seemed too good to refuse. He maintained that he was innocent and had told his attorney so. Asked directly whether anyone had threatened or forced him to plead, Lugo said no. He explained that he had understood prison to be off the table and had expected probation, and that he learned only after the presentence investigation that a 4 prison sentence remained possible, which he said was not the bargain he thought he had struck. The judge who heard the motion had not taken Lugo’s plea. Before ruling, the judge obtained a transcript of the September plea hearing and reviewed it. The court denied the motion in a written order. Although Lugo had filed his motion as a request to withdraw the plea under rule 2.8(5), the court captioned its order as one denying a motion in arrest of judgment. The court’s ruling rested on the plea record. It found that Lugo had told the plea court he had some college education and no trouble reading, writing, or understanding English. He had acknowledged that the charging documents showed strong evidence of his guilt and that the plea gave him a benefit. He had said the plea was voluntary and made of his own free will. And, the court noted, nothing in the colloquy showed that Lugo had been coerced or forced, or that he had asked to stop the proceeding and go to trial. From this, the court concluded that “there is no legal basis available to allow [Lugo] to take back his guilty plea.” Two days later, the court sentenced Lugo to an indeterminate ten-year prison term, which it suspended. It placed him on probation for two years and required him, as a condition, to reside at a residential facility until he had received the program’s maximum benefit. Consistent with the plea agreement, the court dismissed the tax stamp charge and the related matters. Lugo now appeals. He raises a single issue, arguing the district court abused its discretion when it denied his motion to withdraw the Alford plea. STANDARD OF REVIEW The decision whether to permit a defendant to withdraw a plea rests in the sound discretion of the district court, and we review its ruling for an 5 abuse of that discretion.2 State v. Ramirez, 400 N.W.2d 586, 588 (Iowa 1987); State v. Mattly, 513 N.W.2d 739, 741 (Iowa 1994). We will not find an abuse of discretion unless the defendant shows “that such discretion was exercised on grounds or for reasons clearly untenable or to an extent clearly unreasonable.” Ramirez, 400 N.W.2d at 588 (citation omitted). DISCUSSION I. Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.8(5) Under Iowa Rule of Criminal Procedure 2.8(5), “[a]t any time before judgment and upon a showing of good cause and that it is in the interests of justice, the court may permit a guilty plea to be withdrawn and a not guilty plea substituted.” The rule speaks in permissive terms. As our cases have long recognized, the word “may” confers discretion on the court; it “does not give a defendant an absolute right to withdraw” a plea before judgment. State v. Weckman, 180 N.W.2d 434, 436 (Iowa 1970). The decision therefore rests in the sound discretion of the district court, and we reverse only where the defendant shows that the court’s discretion “was exercised on grounds 2 The State contests our jurisdiction to hear this appeal, arguing it lacks good cause and that we should not consider Lugos’s motion to withdraw his plea as a motion in arrest of judgment for the purposes of establishing good cause. See Iowa Code § 814.6(1)(a)(3); (2)(f ) (2024). The State directs us to case law in which our court has declined to treat motions to withdraw plea—for the first time on appeal—as motions in arrest of judgment. See, e.g., State v. Manirabaruta, No. 20-0025, 2021 WL 4890937, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 20, 2021); State v. Petefish, No. 22-1904, 2023 WL 4755572, at *2–3 (Iowa Ct. App. July 26, 2023). Unlike in those cases, Lugo does not attempt this jurisdictional hurdle for the first time on appeal—the district court directly treated his motion as one in arrest of judgment by entering an order “denying motion in arrest of judgment,” and stating “[Lugo]’s Motion in Arrest of Judgment came before the court for consideration.” We choose to interpret the court’s words as it chose them and proceed to the merits. 6 or for reasons clearly untenable or to an extent clearly unreasonable.” Ramirez, 400 N.W.2d at 588 (citation omitted). The touchstone of that inquiry is the validity of the plea. We will uphold the denial of a motion to withdraw where “a defendant, with full knowledge of the charge against him and of his rights and the consequences of a plea of guilty, enters such a plea understandably and without fear or persuasion.” Weckman, 180 N.W.2d at 436. Conversely, a plea “should not be subject to withdrawal merely because [the defendant] had a change of heart.” State v. Blum, 560 N.W.2d 7, 10 (Iowa 1997). Lugo contends that the 2023 amendment to rule 2.8(5) changed this analysis. As he reads the amended rule, once a defendant establishes both “good cause” and that withdrawal is “in the interests of justice,” the district court’s discretion to deny the motion falls away, so that denial necessarily becomes clearly untenable or clearly unreasonable. We reject that construction. The amendment’s own commentary forecloses it. The comment states that “[r]evised rule 2.8(5) is not intended to modify existing law as to when a defendant who pleads guilty may withdraw that plea,” and explains that the added language responded only to a concern that the former rule “could be read as providing for unfettered trial judge discretion.” Iowa R. Crim. P. 2.8(5) cmt. The purpose of the “good cause” and “interests of justice” language was thus to guard against the arbitrary granting of withdrawal, not to compel it. Nothing in the amendment displaces the settled principle that a knowing and voluntary plea supplies a tenable ground on which the district court may, in its discretion, refuse withdrawal. See Ramirez, 400 N.W.2d at 588. Had the drafters meant to convert the court’s discretion into a mandatory duty, or to graft a fixed set of controlling factors onto the 7 rule, they would have said so. The Iowa Supreme Court has declined invitations to impose such measurable standards on this discretionary decision, most notably in refusing to adopt the factors delineated in United States v. Abdullah, 947 F.2d 306, 311 (8th Cir. 1991). See Mattly, 513 N.W.2d at 741. The 2023 amendment did not accomplish by implication what the Iowa Supreme Court has expressly declined to require. II. The District Court Acted Within its Discretion Applying the correct standard, the district court’s ruling was within its discretion. First, the record confirms that Lugo’s plea was knowing, voluntary, and intelligent, and Lugo has never contended otherwise. Counsel candidly acknowledged that he could identify no defect in the plea colloquy and was “not alleging” that the plea was involuntary, asking only that the court exercise its discretion to allow a trial. The judge who ruled on the motion obtained and reviewed the transcript of the plea hearing before deciding. From that record, the court found that Lugo had some college education and no difficulty reading, writing, or understanding English; he acknowledged the charging documents showed strong evidence of his guilt that the plea conferred a benefit; he entered the plea voluntarily and of his own free will; and at no point did he indicate he was coerced or that he wished to stop the proceeding and go to trial. A plea entered under those circumstances is precisely the kind our cases hold a court may, without abusing its discretion, refuse to let the defendant take back. See Weckman, 180 N.W.2d at 436. Second, neither reason Lugo offered required the court to permit withdrawal. His stated desire to proceed to trial on the original charges rested on no change in the facts; counsel conceded that nothing had occurred since the plea to alter Lugo’s view of the case. A renewed wish to contest guilt, 8 unaccompanied by any defect in the plea or any changed circumstance, is a change of heart; and a change of heart is not a basis for withdrawal. Blum, 560 N.W.2d at 10. That Lugo maintained his innocence throughout does not distinguish his case; an Alford plea is by definition entered by a defendant who declines to admit guilt, and Lugo’s protestation of innocence was fully known to him—and to the court—when he entered the plea. Nor does Lugo’s asserted need to care for his ailing mother render the denial untenable. The district court was entitled to weigh that circumstance and to conclude in its discretion that it did not justify undoing a valid plea. The rule commits that judgment to the trial court, and the existence of a sympathetic reason to grant relief does not make the decision to withhold it an abuse of discretion. Finally, the record supports the district court’s implicit assessment of what actually prompted the motion. Lugo told the court that “[p]rison was off the table” and that he had expected probation, only to learn through the presentence investigation that a prison sentence remained possible—“not what I agreed to.” But the plea agreement left both sides free to argue sentencing and obligated the State only to consider recommending probation, a commitment it could withdraw if Lugo incurred new charges. In the interim, Lugo’s pretrial release was revoked more than once, and the State charged him with new offenses in Polk and Warren Counties. His motion, filed the day of sentencing, thus reflects the insufficient expectation of leniency. A defendant “cannot be permitted to enter a guilty plea, gamble on the sentence, and then move to withdraw the plea if he is disappointed with the severity of the imposed sentence.” Ramirez, 400 N.W.2d at 589–90 (citation omitted). This case closely tracks Mattly, where the defendant’s belated request to withdraw coincided with “the realization that 9 incarceration, not probation, was imminent,” and where the trial court reasonably found that the defendant’s real “problem is that she doesn’t want to go to the penitentiary.” 513 N.W.2d at 740, 741. As in Mattly and Ramirez, the circumstances here did not compel withdrawal. In sum, the district court applied the correct legal standard, reviewed the plea record, and reasonably concluded that Lugo’s valid plea furnished no basis to permit its withdrawal. That decision was neither clearly untenable nor clearly unreasonable. We find no abuse of discretion and affirm the district court’s denial of Lugo’s motion to withdraw his Alford plea. AFFIRMED. 10