IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF IOWA
No. 25-0663
Filed August 19, 2026
Gabriel Luis Vasquez,
Applicant–Appellant,
v.
State of Iowa,
Respondent–Appellee.
Appeal from the Iowa District Court for Scott County,
The Honorable Patrick A. McElyea, Judge.
AFFIRMED
Sonia M. Elossais of Carr Law Firm, P.L.C., Des Moines, attorney for
appellant.
Brenna Bird, Attorney General, and Louis S. Sloven, Assistant Attorney
General, attorneys for appellee.
Considered without oral argument
by Greer, P.J., and Buller and Langholz, JJ.
Opinion by Greer, P.J.
1
GREER, Presiding Judge.
Gabriel Vasquez appeals from the denial of his third application for postconviction relief (PCR) as time-barred.1 After Vasquez was convicted of two counts of second-degree sexual abuse and one count of third-degree sexual abuse in 2009, he filed a direct appeal, which was unsuccessful, followed by two appeals related to his other unsuccessful PCR claims. See State v. Vasquez, No. 10-0085, 2011 WL 2089778, at *5 (Iowa Ct. App. May 25, 2011) (affirming convictions on direct appeal); Vasquez v. State, No. 16-0235, 2017 WL 1278290, at *5 (Iowa Ct. App. Apr. 5, 2017) (affirming denial of first PCR application); Vasquez v. State, No. 21-1250, 2023 WL 4521394, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. July 13, 2023) (affirming summary dismissal of second PCR application).
Now, in this third PCR action, Vasquez claims that New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), is a new ground of law that provides “an updated standard of review for laws that address fundamental
constitutional rights.” Specifically, Vasquez attempts to use the reasoning in Bruen to avoid the PCR statute of limitations and to require a new approach to reviewing a motion to dismiss in a PCR case.
1
This PCR application was filed on December 5, 2022. Iowa Code section 822.3 (2022) requires applications for postconviction relief to “be filed within three years from the date the conviction or decision is final or, in the event of an appeal, from the date the writ of procedendo is issued.” And as we found in Vasquez’s second PCR appeal, he had until 2014 to file his PCR application unless he raised “a ground of fact or law that could not have been raised within” the three-year limitations period. Vasquez, 2023 WL 4521394, at *1 (quoting Iowa Code § 822.3).
2
We review a motion to dismiss a PCR application for correction of
errors at law. Moon v. State, 911 N.W.2d 137, 142 (Iowa 2018). “When the basis for relief implicates a violation of a constitutional dimension, our review is de novo.” Id.
On the issue of the application of Bruen to the PCR statute of
limitations, we find this argument to be the same as found in other cases we have decided. In those cases, we found that argument to be unsuccessful. See Dixon v. State, No. 23-2106, 2025 WL 1704196, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. June 18, 2025) (finding the claimed exception under Bruen does not apply to a challenge to the statute of limitations); Woodberry v. State, No. 23-1956, 2025 WL 1704362, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. June 18, 2025); Thongvanh v. State, No. 24-0783, 2025 WL 547744, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Feb. 19, 2025). Thus, Vasquez’s statute-of-limitations challenge based on the reasoning under Bruen is meritless. See Neal v. State, No. 24-0669, 2025 WL 1321447, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. May 7, 2025) (calling this argument a “radical expansion of Bruen’s analysis”).2
Lastly, as a second and final challenge, Vasquez again draws on Bruen and asserts the PCR court “failed to limit its considerations to the face of the petition and view the facts in a light most favorable to [Vasquez].” Vasquez requests that we extend Bruen to “other constitutional rights” beyond the second amendment. See 597 U.S. at 24–25. In a PCR action involving
2
Furthermore, in this PCR case, Vasquez again raises issues about mental-health records that were not admitted in his underlying trial. This is an old song. Vasquez cannot get around the PCR court’s finding that his PCR claims were also barred by res judicata, as the court noted that his challenge about the inability to utilize the complaining witness’s mental-health records during the underlying trial was not a new allegation and the issue had been addressed on direct appeal and again in his PCR appeal. See Vasquez, 2017 WL 1278290, at *3; Vasquez, 2011 WL 2089778, at *4.
3
summary dismissal, “[t]he moving party bears the burden of showing the absence of a genuine issue of material facts.” Moon, 911 N.W.2d at 142. “We view the record in the light most favorable to the nonmoving party” and “draw all legitimate inferences from the record in favor of the nonmoving party.” Id. at 142–43. As the State argues, and we agree, Vasquez cannot “show that Bruen changed the law as applied to anything other than Second Amendment challenges.” See Winfrey v. State, No. 24-0573, 2025 WL
2924556, at *1 (Iowa Ct. App. Oct. 15, 2025) (noting the defendant could not explain how there was a new ground of law, as the arguments were no more than “a general reevaluation of constitutional rights preempting state law”).
As Vasquez’s PCR application is time-barred and Bruen provides no
avenue to challenge the denial of his application, we affirm the dismissal.
AFFIRMED.
4