The Iowa Supreme Court has thrown out the conviction of a former Davis County Community School District coach who had sex with a student. Patrick Nicoletto was an assistant girls’ basketball coach from 2007 to 2009. He had a sexual relationship with a member of the Davis County varsity team that started when she was 16. A jury convicted him of sexual exploitation by a school employee and he was given a five-year prison sentence. Nicoletto had a coaching authorization, but worked nights at a local manufacturing company and was not a teacher.

He appealed his conviction saying he is not a licensed professional could not be charged under the exploitation law. The Iowa Supreme Court ruled in his favor, saying a coach who holds a teaching or other professional license is clearly subject to the sexual exploitation law — but someone holding only a coaching authorization without a professional license is not. They reversed Nicoletto’s conviction.

Justice Thomas Waterman wrote a dissent to the ruling, saying the “hypertechnical interpretation” opens a gaping loophole in the law that was enacted to protect students from sexual exploitation by adults at their school. Justice Edward Mansfield also signed on to Waterman’s dissent.

(Radio Iowa)

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) – A review has found that nine more Iowans wrongly had their votes thrown out in the 2012 election because of inaccuracies in the state’s list of ineligible felons.    Secretary of State Matt Schultz announced Friday the additional cases were uncovered during a statewide review launched after news broke that three voters in Cerro Gordo County were wrongly rejected as felons.

Schultz says the 12 cases included three who were not felons but were wrongly included on the state’s list and nine others who had their voting rights restored and should have been eligible.     Schultz on Friday also formed a task force of state and local officials to fix inaccuracies in the felon file, which contains 46,000 names.

Iowans convicted of felonies lose their voting rights until restored by the governor.

A woman from Crawford County has agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of Second-degree Burglary, in connection with a double homicide last month near Deloit, Iowa. The Omaha World-Herald says in her plea agreement, 36-year old Erika M. Dains, of Denison, also plead guilty Thursday in Crawford County District Court, to being an accessory after the fact. Dains had originally been charged with two counts of first-degree murder and one count of first-degree arson in connection with the March 10th murders of Marvin Huelsing and Alice Huisenga on Huelsing’s property southeast of Deloit. Her two co-defendants, 19-year old Jayden Ray Chapman and 26-year old Michael David Schenk, both of Denison, have pleaded not guilty to murder and arson charges.

According to court records, Chapman told law enforcement officials that he, Schenk and Dains had gone to the farmstead to steal scrap metal. According to a complaint and affidavit filed earlier in Crawford County District Court, Chapman said he and Schenk shot Huelsing and Huisenga and then set fire to a trailer with the victims inside. As part of the plea agreement, Dains agreed to testify for the prosecution at her co-defendants’ trials.

The original charges against Dains were dropped without prejudice, which means the prosecution can refile the charges if Dains violates the terms of the plea agreement. All three have been held in the Crawford County Jail in Denison on $500,000 cash-­only bail since their arrest March 13th. Thursday’s plea agreement stipulated that Dains’ bail continue as previously set.

In pleading guilty, Dains agreed to prison terms of 10 years on the burglary charge and two years on the accessory charge. A determination will be made at sentencing whether Dains must serve the terms one after the other, for a total of 12 years, or at the same time, for a total of 10 years. Sentencing for Dains will not occur until after the cases against Schenk and Chapman are concluded.