(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Supreme Court is considering a Sioux City case involving the right to talk to a lawyer when you are taken into custody.

The case involves Faron Starr who was taken into custody in 2022 after a stabbing and the alleged theft of guns in a separate break-in. The district court ruled his confession was inadmissible after police refused to let him make a call during questioning. During oral arguments before the Supreme Court Monday evening,

Prosecutor Thomas Ogden told the justices officers didn’t allow Starr’s call as the guns were missing. “We’re talking here about a delay and the delay is justified by the officers making an effort to locate the firearms. I think that if it became clear to them that that effort was not going to bear fruit then the statute would direct them to permit the phone call,” he says. He says there are exceptions for such instances.

Chief Justice Susan Christensen asked how this case was different from other cases. “In your typical shooting law enforcement probably doesn’t have reason to believe that the gun has been abandoned in an area where it represents a threat to public safety,” Ogden says. He says they didn’t know if the guns were left where a child or someone else could get them.

Faron Starr. (Woodbury Cty Jail photo)

Starr’s Attorney Lucas Taylor says his client’s rights were violated. “This case is about police misconduct period. This is not a case about the safety application to the public safety exception,” Taylor says. Taylor says it was six hours before Starr was apprehended. He says there is a very narrow public safety exception, and cited an example of where the exception might be used.

“A situation where we have a suspect who was witnessed with a firearm, who then leads law enforcement on a pursuit that lasts a matter of minutes. And then that suspect is apprehended without a firearm, leading to strong circumstantial evidence that firearm was discarded haphazardly, and where that firearm might be just laying out in public view,” Taylor says. Starr pled not guilty and the case is pending the ruling by the Supreme Court.

The justices will consider the oral arguments and make a ruling at a later day. Starr is currently in jail on an unrelated murder charge.