Johnatan Sanchez

The Iowa Court of Appeals has affirmed convictions of four counts of first-degree burglary and one count of possession of a firearm and vacated part of a sentence in the case of Johnatan Sanchez. According to court documents, on March 8, 2013, Sanchez was at a home in Washington at a gathering of unchaperoned high school students, including five males from Burlington. The situation became tense when a friend of Sanchez claimed he could not find his identification and Sanchez grabbed a double-barrel shotgun. He then pointed the gun at the Burlington students and demanded that one empty his pockets and took any cash he found in the wallet. Sanchez and another male followed the students outside, telling them to not call police and threatening harm if they did. One student did notify police.

The case was tried to a jury and Sanchez was found guilty as charged. Sanchez was sentenced to incarceration not to exceed 25 years for each robbery and five for the firearm offense, all sentences to run concurrent to each other.

Sanchez contended that his acts constituted only one robbery, violating rights under the Double Jeopardy Clause. According to the Court of Appeals, his argument fails because he doesn’t distinguish his double jeopardy claim from a substantive challenge to state law defining the offenses. Iowa Code defines robbery as occurring when someone has the intent to commit a theft commits an assault, threatens another, or puts another in fear of immediate serious injury, or threatens to commit immediately any forcible felony in the furtherance of the commission of the intended theft.

The only part of Sanchez’s sentence vacated was a no-contact provision. Sanchez was 20 years old at the time of the incident.