Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa —
Part One: Intersex in Iowa
Article Three:
Collateral Damage
Three Discoveries in 2022 That Changed Everything I Thought I Knew About the 2006–2009 Cases.
By Sondra Wilson | Updated August 30, 2026
This article continues from The Records Mismatch, which documents the May 22 and July 21, 2006 arrests, the conflicting government records surrounding my transition, the City of Ames apology letter, and the $1,500 payment that followed.
This article shows how, in 2022, I ordered copies of the dockets for my 2006 and 2009 cases, and discovered three consequential
1. The police records I obtained in 2022 contained a version of the May 22, 2006 encounter that I dispute—including statements that I had repeatedly refused requests to stop playing and leave, and that I was “uncooperative”;
2. The attorney who "helped" me filed guilty pleas to two charges I had pleaded not guilty to; and
3. The judge who found me "guilty" in 2009 had already recused from my 2006 case because he directed my arrest—and the Judicial-Conduct Rules required his recusal.
Where You Are in My Testimony
This is Article Three within Part One—Intersex in Iowa—of my documentary reconstruction of Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa.
Article One, The Records Mismatch, documents the two 2006 arrests, the conflicting government records surrounding my transition, and the resolution I understood I had received afterward: a City of Ames apology letter and a $1,500 payment.
Article Two, The Officer's Warning, documents the 2009 assault case, the conflicting trial testimony, Judge Steven Van Marel's role in that case, and the officer who warned me afterward to leave Iowa for my safety.
For many years, that was essentially the story I told people when I described what had happened to me in Ames.
I had pleaded NOT GUILTY. An attorney came to help me. The City issued an apology letter and a $1,500 payment. I was told the restroom case had helped establish something important for transgender rights. I left Iowa believing that, despite everything I had gone through, I had ultimately prevailed.
I repeated that story over the years because that is what I understood had happened.
I did not know that the official court record told a very different story.
This third installment, Collateral Damage, begins in 2022, when an apartment denial and the Reliable Street dispute caused me to obtain the old 2006–2009 court records.
That was when I discovered that the legal record did not merely fail to preserve the apology and payment. It showed that guilty pleas had been entered to the two May 22 charges I had personally pleaded NOT GUILTY to—and one of those charges was Interference With Official Acts.
That discovery was much more serious than simply learning that an old plea had been changed.
I had just obtained a police summary stating that I had repeatedly refused requests to stop playing and leave and had been “uncooperative,” followed by the statement that I was charged with Interference With Official Acts.
That did not happen.
It left an official record showing that I had been convicted of Interference With Official Acts, while the police record I obtained sixteen years later portrayed me as repeatedly refusing instructions and being “uncooperative”—an account I dispute.
As I remember my interactions with Gordon Allen, we never discussed resolving the May 22 case through a guilty plea to Interference With Official Acts—or anything that would amount to accepting criminal responsibility for physically resisting an officer. What I distinctly remember discussing was the restroom arrest and the resolution I was told would establish a precedent for transgender people in the future.
I had no idea that the surviving court record would instead make it appear that I had accepted guilt for conduct that never occurred.
What I found in 2022 changed my understanding of the entire 2006–2009 history.
The Reliable Street Dispute Forced Me Back Into Records I Had Never Seen
In March 2022, as recounted in Record Retaliation, I publicly told part of the story of what had happened to me in Ames between 2006 and 2009 at a Reliable Street open mic.
Two days later, I was barred from the property after being told I had been accused of “violating a woman's space.”
After I filed a civil-rights complaint, the respondents submitted statements to the Iowa Civil Rights Commission falsely portraying me as stalking, harassing, obsessive, intrusive, and dangerous.
Because I had publicly discussed the old criminal cases immediately before the Reliable Street rupture, I became seriously concerned that those records would be used to reinforce the new accusations or support additional false allegations against me.
Defendants knew I was compiling facts that would later form the basis of part two of my petition in Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa and they knew that I had founded and was in-the-process of developing Wild Willpower. In other words, they knew I was politically active, and not just seeking basic advocacy, but rather accountability.
I therefore went to the District 2 courthouse in Ames and retrieved the old court dockets and police records from the 2006 and 2009 incidents.
What I found changed my understanding of that history.
I discovered three things I had not known when those events occurred:
1. Officer Blake Marshall and Nathan Rivera were identified in a 2022 Ames Police records summary that preserved a police version of the May 22 encounter I had never understood was associated with the Interference With Official Acts charge;
2. The two May 22 charges to which I had pleaded NOT GUILTY (see page 18) were later resolved as GUILTY through a written plea filed by Gordon Allen (see pages 2-5), while the separate restroom-trespass charge was dismissed—and the filed document said the underlying plea agreement was only “partially described”;
3. Judge Steven Van Marel had personally directed the July 21 restroom arrest and had recused himself from that 2006 case because of his involvement—yet three years later he presided over the 2009 assault case.
Those three discoveries are the subject of this article.
Contents of Article
I. The Police Record I Had Never Seen — What Ames Police Said Happened on May 22, 2006
II. The Plea Agreement I Was Never Told About, and Would Not Have Consented To
III. The Judge's Role I Did Not Know About
IV. These Discoveries Became Part One of Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa
V. Two Reforms Born From What Happened
VI. What I Did Not Know About Iowa Then
I. The Police Record I Had Never Seen —
What Ames Police Said Happened on May 22, 2006”
On May 22, 2006, I was playing guitar off to the side of the Kum & Go building in west Ames when Officers Blake Marshall and Nathan Rivera approached me.
They asked for identification. I did not have an ID with me, so I told them my name was Alexandra and gave them my Social Security number.
Officer Marshall ran the information and told me that it was coming back under the name Alexander Wilson, rather than Alexandra.
He began questioning me about the discrepancy.
I explained that I was transgender and undergoing medical transition. I told him that I was receiving medical care, and I had my medications with me.
That is the context I remember giving him for why the name I had provided did not match the information he retrieved.
I do not presently remember whether I had already completed a formal name or gender-marker change in California by that date, and I do not currently have records establishing whether I had. I therefore do not rely on that uncertain detail in recounting what happened.
What I remember is that after I explained that I was transgender, Marshall's demeanor toward me changed, and shortly afterward I was arrested.
That is when Officer Marshall's demeanor toward me changed.
Shortly afterward, I was arrested and handcuffed.
There was no physical struggle. I did not fight the officers, wrestle with them, kick them, or physically resist arrest.
That point matters because I did not understand in 2006 that police had written a materially different account into the record.
I Did Not Fully Understand the Interference With Official Acts Charge in 2006
I understood that I had been charged with trespass.
I did not understand what conduct police were claiming supported the separate charge of Interference With Official Acts.
The case was supposed to proceed to trial, and I likely would have learned more about the charge through that process. But that trial never occurred as expected. When I returned to the courthouse on July 21, 2006, I was arrested again after using the women's restroom across the hall from the courtroom.
As a result, the May 22 case did not unfold through the trial process I had expected.
Years later, the existence of the interference charge became consequential again.
Earlier in 2022, my boyfriend and I were denied an apartment, and I learned that the old Interference With Official Acts charge was still appearing in my record. I did not understand where that charge had come from or what police had alleged to support it.
Then the Reliable Street dispute created a second, much more urgent reason to reopen the old files. After respondents placed new accusations into the Iowa Civil Rights Commission record portraying me as stalking, harassing, obsessive, intrusive, and dangerous, I became seriously concerned that my existing criminal record could be used to reinforce those allegations or support additional false accusations against me.
Those two events—the apartment denial and the Reliable Street accusations—prompted me to retrieve the old court dockets and police records.
The Interference With Official Acts Charge, Which I Do Not Recall I Was Being Charged With,
Had a Police Narrative Attached to It
When I requested the Ames Police records in 2022, the Department did not provide me with the complete underlying investigative file.
Its November 3, 2022 response expressly stated:
“The records you are requesting are confidential under Iowa Code section 22.7(5). The following is a summary of the non-confidential information contained in the records.”
What I received, therefore, was a summary of the underlying police records—not the complete police file itself.
I do not know whether a separate May 22 complaint, affidavit, narrative, or other document exists within the confidential material that contains additional allegations concerning the Interference With Official Acts charge. If such a document exists, I have not seen it.
What I can document from the material Ames Police actually released to me is the following:
The November 3, 2022 Ames Police records summary states:
“The subject had been asked to stop playing and leave the premises by Kum & Go staff and had refused.”
It continues:
“When officers arrived, the subject was asked to stop playing so they could speak with her. She continued to sing for another two minutes and was again asked to stop. She refused and officers then attempted to take the subject's guitar to get her to stop. She was uncooperative and taken into custody.”
The summary then states that I was charged with Trespassing and Interference With Official Acts.
I dispute that version of the encounter.
What I remember is the officers approaching me, asking for identification, running my information, discovering that it came back under Alexander Wilson, and me explaining that I was transgender and undergoing medical treatment.
Officer Marshall's demeanor changed after that explanation, and then I was arrested.
Officer Rivera later told me on the drive to jail that they had not initially planned to arrest me for playing music; they had been planning to ask me to leave, and Marshall decided to arrest me after seeing that my records did not match.
There was no physical struggle. I did not fight the officers, kick them, wrestle with them, or resist being handcuffed. But importantly, the records presently in my possession do not themselves accuse me of doing those things.
What the surviving police summary does accuse me of is repeatedly refusing instructions and being “uncooperative”—an account I also dispute.
The actual sequence I remember is straightforward: the officers approached me, asked for identification, ran my information, discovered that the records came back under Alexander Wilson, and I explained that I was transgender and undergoing medical treatment.
Officer Marshall's demeanor changed after that explanation, and then I was arrested.
Officer Rivera later described a sequence that was also inconsistent with the idea that police had arrived intending to arrest me for violent or obstructive behavior. On the drive to jail, he told me that they did not normally arrest people for playing music, that they had been planning to ask me to leave, and that Marshall decided to arrest me after seeing that my records did not match.
The November 3, 2022 Ames Police records summary confirmed that the May 22 incident resulted in both the trespass and interference charges. It also preserved the police version of events that I had not understood was sitting behind the interference charge.
That was one of the first major discoveries I made when I reopened the old records: the police record preserved an account portraying me as repeatedly refusing instructions and being “uncooperative,” while identifying the resulting charges as trespass and Interference With Official Acts. I dispute that account.
II. The Plea Agreement I Was Never Told About
and Would Not Have Consented To
The Records Show Exactly What Changed:
Two Guilty Counts and One Dismissed Case
The court record makes the sequence unusually clear.
On May 23, 2006, I entered a plea of NOT GUILTY in SMSM062317. The case involved two charges arising from the May 22 encounter: criminal trespass and interference with official acts.
In the separate restroom-trespass case, SMSM062530, Gordon Allen later filed an Appearance of Counsel and Confirmation of Plea expressly stating that I had previously entered a plea of NOT GUILTY and that, through counsel, I was “reassert[ing] and confirm[ing]” that plea and my demand for jury trial.
But a later document—Defendant's Response and Written Plea—took a different course.
That filing addressed two case numbers: SMSM062317 and SMSM062530. It conditionally entered a written plea of GUILTY “to the charges” in SMSM062317, contingent upon two things:
- dismissal of the separate criminal-trespass charge in SMSM062530; and
- a sentence in SMSM062317 of no more jail time than I had already served awaiting trial.
The State's own Motion to Dismiss / State's Recommendation confirms the structure of the agreement: SMSM062317 contained the criminal-trespass and interference-with-official-acts charges; SMSM062530 was the separate restroom-trespass case; and the agreement called for guilty pleas to the two charges in SMSM062317 in exchange for dismissal of SMSM062530.
The subsequent Judgment Entry then adjudged me guilty of Count I: trespass and Count II: interference with official acts.
The written guilty-plea document is signed by Gordon Allen. It is not signed by me.
Even more importantly, the document repeatedly states that the underlying “plea agreement” was only “partially described.”
I had never been shown any separate agreement containing the complete terms.
That was the record I discovered sixteen years later: two guilty convictions entered through counsel, one separate case dismissed, and an underlying plea agreement that the filed document itself said was only “partially described.”
The Interference Conviction Changed the Meaning of Marshall's Allegations
There was another reason this discovery was especially serious.
By then, I had also obtained the Ames Police records summary, which said that I had refused requests to stop playing and leave, continued singing after officers asked me to stop, and was “uncooperative” when officers attempted to take my guitar. The same summary states that I was charged with Interference With Official Acts.
The released summary does not accuse me of physically struggling with the officers. I nevertheless want to make one point unmistakably clear from my firsthand memory of the arrest: there was no physical struggle. I did not fight, kick, wrestle with, or physically resist either officer.
Because Ames Police withheld the underlying file and provided only a non-confidential summary, I cannot presently say whether some unreleased document contains additional allegations. I can only say that I have never seen such a document, and that no physical struggle occurred.
Yet the written plea filed through Gordon Allen resolved that very charge as GUILTY.
So when I placed the police records summary beside the plea documents, I realized that the surviving record contained both a disputed police narrative and a guilty conviction for Interference With Official Acts—even though I had never understood in 2006 what factual conduct was supposedly supporting that charge.
That was never how Allen had explained the resolution to me.
As I recall our discussions, Allen and I were focused on the restroom arrest, the apology letter, the payment, and his representation to me that the case could help establish a precedent for transgender people in the future.
I do not recall ever discussing an agreement in which I would abandon my NOT GUILTY position in the May 22 case and accept a conviction for Interference With Official Acts.
Had I understood that was what the proposed resolution required, I would not have agreed to it.
The Filing Also Spoke for Me in Terms I Would Not Have Used
The written plea filed in my name repeatedly referred to me with male pronouns and identified me under my former male name.
That was not a trivial detail to me.
By 2006, the conflict underlying these arrests involved precisely the question of how government officials were treating me as a transgender woman.
I would not knowingly have chosen language presenting my own position to the court as though I were simply a man accused of entering a women's restroom.
Again, the larger point was becoming clear:
A legal filing had been made in my name that did not reflect the position I had personally taken in court: NOT GUILTY.
The Apology Was Not Preserved in the Official Record
After discovering the plea entries in the court dockets, I submitted records requests to Story County and the City of Ames.
I wanted to know whether the government had preserved any record of the apology letter, the $1,500 check, or the contents of the plea arrangement referenced in the court filings.
The responses I received were deeply troubling.
The contrast was especially striking because the January 4, 2007 City of Ames apology letter was explicit. Written on behalf of both the City and the Ames Police Department, it acknowledged that my use of the women's restroom was:
“consistent with medical and psychiatric treatment and in compliance with a therapeutic regimen.”
The City also stated that it was taking steps to educate police about transgender issues and:
“the limited authority of judges to direct the actions of police officers.”
The letter apologized for the incident, even while disclaiming liability.
I also retained the $1,500 City of Ames check, whose accompanying record identifies the payment as a “DAMAGE CLAIM.”
Those were not vague memories sixteen years later. I still possessed the apology letter and the check.
I then tried to determine whether the government itself had retained the documents or context that I had been given in 2006–2007.
My October 30, 2022 records request to the City of Ames expressly told City officials:
“Last week I ordered a copy of the docket from this case, and noticed for the first time it appears my NOT GUILTY plea was changed to a GUILTY plea as part of a ‘plea agreement’ I was not made aware of until now...”
I attached the apology letter, the City check, and Gordon Allen's written plea filing.
I also pointed out:
“The document repeatedly states that the plea agreement is ‘partially described’ within this document.”
And I asked for:
“an unredacted copy of this ‘plea agreement’ which pertains to me so that I may read what it says in full.”
I also asked Story County to locate the missing agreement and related documentation.
In my October 31, 2022 records request to Story County, I explained that I had already obtained the court docket, but:
“they didn't seem to have any additional documentation regarding this case.”
I specifically explained that Gordon Allen's filing referred to a plea agreement that was not contained in the docket:
“Within the docket you can see where Gordon Allen references a plea agreement which isn't shown anywhere in the docket.”
I then explained the resolution as it had been presented to me:
“Somehow, within that plea agreement, it was arranged that the City of Ames would write an apology letter and give me a $1500 check.”
Because the City Attorney had told me the matter had been handled through the County Attorney's Office, I asked Story County to check for the underlying record.
Story County responded that it would check with the County Attorney's Office.
The following day, after doing so, Story County's Director of External Operations and County Services wrote:
“Thanks for your request; after diligent inquiry no such record exists.”
That response matters. I had the apology letter. I had the $1,500 check. I had a court filing expressly stating that the “plea agreement” was only “partially described.” But when I asked Story County for the underlying agreement that would explain how those pieces fit together, the County told me that, “after diligent inquiry,” no such record existed.
What the court record did preserve was a guilty judgment.
The Judgment Entry stated:
“The defendant, by counsel, enters a written plea of guilty to trespass and interference with official acts and waives time and presence.”
It then ordered:
“the defendant is adjudged guilty of trespass at count I ... and interference with official acts at count II....”
So the durable court record that another landlord, court, employer, or investigator could later encounter was a record of guilt.
By contrast, the City apology letter stated that my use of the women's restroom had been:
“consistent with medical and psychiatric treatment and in compliance with a therapeutic regimen.”
The City also said it would educate officers regarding:
“the limited authority of judges to direct the actions of police officers.”
And the surviving City check identified the $1,500 payment as:
“DAMAGE CLAIM.”
I still possessed those documents. But they were not what the criminal judgment said about me.
I had walked away believing the City had acknowledged that something had gone wrong.
The lasting court record said that I was guilty.
And that guilty record included Interference With Official Acts—the same charge identified in the police summary immediately after a disputed account portraying me as refusing instructions and being “uncooperative.”
So the documents that survived did not merely make me look technically guilty of an old misdemeanor. They preserved a conviction for Interference With Official Acts alongside a police narrative I dispute, while the complete agreement that supposedly explained how I came to plead guilty could not be produced when I went looking for it sixteen years later.
I Asked the Attorney Disciplinary Board to Review the Plea Issue
After discovering the written guilty plea, I filed a complaint with the Iowa Supreme Court Attorney Disciplinary Board against Gordon Allen.
The issue was straightforward: I told the Board that I had not authorized Allen to enter guilty pleas to the two charges in SMSM062317.
The Board's November 14, 2023 response addressed the precise factual dispute that the surviving court record could not resolve: Gordon Allen said I had verbally authorized the plea changes. I said I had not.
The Board also recognized the governing professional rule. Iowa Rule of Professional Conduct 32:1.2(a) provides that, in a criminal case, the lawyer must abide by the client's decision concerning “the plea to be entered.”
In its response dismissing my complaint, the Attorney Disciplinary Board's Director wrote:
“Respondent asserted that he received verbal consent from you to change your please in your two criminal matters. You, 17 years later, dispute that you would have agreed to changing the pleas.... The Board noted that respondent's best practice would have been to have your signature on the document filed in court or some sort of written documentation of the conversation and consent in the file. However, since this case was so long ago, memories fade or change, and respondent has not retained the file, there is no independent way to verify what conversation you had about resolving [the matter]. Because it cannot meet its burden of proving ethical misconduct in this situation, the Board has dismissed the complaint.”
That response did not determine that I had authorized the guilty pleas. It said the opposite problem prevented the Board from proving misconduct: seventeen years later, Allen no longer had the file and there was “no independent way to verify” which account of the conversation was correct.
Yet one important fact remained visible in the surviving court record: the written guilty-plea filing bears Gordon Allen's signature, not mine.
The Board itself identified the safeguard that would have prevented this dispute:
“respondent's best practice would have been to have your signature on the document filed in court or some sort of written documentation of the conversation and consent in the file.”
That is the problem my Attorney-Client “Right to Review” reform is designed to eliminate.
No client should discover sixteen years later that an attorney filed a plea, waiver, settlement, admission, or other material representation in the client's name and then be left with an evidentiary dispute that can no longer be resolved because the lawyer's file is gone and nothing bearing the client's written authorization survives.
III. The Judge's Role I Did Not Know About
The 2022 Police Records Revealed That Judge Steven Van Marel Had Directed My Restroom Arrest
Another records request produced one of the most consequential discoveries I made when I reopened these old files.
The Ames Police Department's November 3, 2022 records response concerning the July 21, 2006 restroom arrest stated:
“Judge Van Marel was aware of the situation and directed Officer Marshall to arrest Wilson on a charge of Trespass.”
But this was not merely something Ames Police first wrote in a retrospective 2022 summary.
The original July 21, 2006 Complaint and Affidavit, signed by Officer Blake Marshall, stated:
“The arrest was ordered by Judge Van Marel.”
So the contemporaneous 2006 complaint itself attributed the arrest order to Van Marel.
That is significant because it independently corroborates the later records summary: the claim that Van Marel directed my arrest was already memorialized in the criminal record at the time the arrest occurred.
The same summary described me at the time as:
“currently a male who is attempting to become a female and is still listed as a male on driver’s license.”
I had not known in 2006 that Judge Steven Van Marel had personally directed Officer Marshall to arrest me as I left the women's restroom.
That was not a minor procedural detail. The judge before whom I had appeared for the earlier criminal case had participated in causing a second criminal case to be brought against me.
The old court file then revealed something even more important.
Gordon Allen Had Moved to Recuse Van Marel — and Van Marel Granted the Recusal
Gordon Allen had moved to have Judge Van Marel recused from the 2006 restroom-trespass case.
Another judge entered an order stating that Allen's “Motion to Recuse” was:
“more properly directed to the Honorable Steven Van Marel for consideration of withdrawal pursuant to Canon 3 of the Iowa Code of Judicial Conduct.”
Van Marel then entered his own order.
He wrote:
“The Court is in receipt of the defendant's motion to recuse. The Court notes that, while this Court was not a witness to the events alleged in the charge of trespass, the Court directed the Ames Police Department to arrest the defendant on the offense of trespassing.”
He then concluded:
“The Court, therefore, finds it appropriate to recuse itself from hearing any further proceedings in this matter.”
And the order formally provided:
“IT IS THEREFORE THE ORDER of this Court that this Court recuses itself from hearing any further proceedings in this matter.”
The surviving court record therefore does not merely show that someone later questioned Van Marel's involvement. Van Marel himself acknowledged that he had directed my arrest and then recused himself from the resulting prosecution.
Despite my serious dispute with Gordon Allen over the plea filings discussed earlier in this article, seeking Van Marel's recusal from the 2006 restroom case was something Allen did right.
Three Years Later, Van Marel Presided Over My 2009 Assault Case
That discovery completely changed how I understood what happened three years later.
In 2009, Judge Van Marel presided over the assault case against me—the case documented in The Officer's Warning.
At the time of that trial:
I did not know that Van Marel had personally directed my 2006 arrest.
I did not know that Gordon Allen had sought to have him recused because of that involvement.
And I did not know that Van Marel had already recused himself from the resulting 2006 case.
Had I known those facts, I would have sought his disqualification from the 2009 case.
This was not a recusal theory I invented sixteen years later because I disliked the 2009 result. Gordon Allen had already raised the recusal issue in 2006, and Van Marel had already granted it because of his own involvement in directing my arrest.
What I lacked in 2009 was knowledge that any of that had happened.
But the problem is more serious than whether I personally knew enough law or possessed enough records to file the right motion.
The Iowa Code of Judicial Conduct Did Not Make Recusal Depend Upon Me Discovering the Problem
Iowa Code of Judicial Conduct Rule 51:2.11(A) provides:
“A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
The Rule expressly includes circumstances in which:
“The judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party ... or personal knowledge of facts that are in dispute in the proceeding.”
The accompanying commentary makes the obligation even clearer:
“Under this rule, a judge is disqualified whenever the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned....”
Most importantly:
“A judge's obligation not to hear or decide matters in which disqualification is required applies regardless of whether a motion to disqualify is filed.”
That last sentence is crucial.
I was not a lawyer in 2009. I was representing myself. And I did not possess the records showing that Van Marel had directed my arrest three years earlier.
But Rule 51:2.11 did not make the judge's obligation depend upon whether I happened to discover those hidden facts and know enough law to raise the issue myself.
The Rule says “shall disqualify.”
Its commentary says that obligation exists “regardless of whether a motion to disqualify is filed.”
I therefore maintain that Van Marel was required to disqualify himself from the 2009 proceeding because his prior personal involvement with me created circumstances in which his impartiality could reasonably be questioned.
The Trial Record Made That Failure Especially Consequential
TThis was not a proceeding in which the judge's impartiality could have had little practical effect. As the factfinder in the 2009 bench trial, Van Marel was required to evaluate sharply conflicting testimony and decide whom to believe.
The outcome turned directly upon credibility.
As documented more fully in The Officer's Warning:
1. the accuser's own witness testified that he had seen the entire incident and that I never touched her;
2. another witness gave an account during cross-examination that differed substantially from the accuser's; and
3. the complainant's courtroom account did not match the statement she had previously given police.
Yet Van Marel found me guilty.
That left me with an assault conviction I maintain should never have existed.
The consequences did not stop at the courtroom door.
Immediately after the trial, an Ames police officer who had testified approached me privately in the hallway and warned me to leave Iowa for my safety.
I took that warning seriously.
I remained homeless and afraid to return to my home state for years.
That is why discovering Van Marel's earlier role in 2022 was not simply an interesting fact about an old docket. It altered the meaning of a conviction whose consequences had followed me for years.
I Asked the Iowa Commission on Judicial Qualifications to Investigate
On July 17, 2023, I filed a complaint concerning Van Marel with the Iowa Commission on Judicial Qualifications.
My complaint explained that Van Marel had been involved in the 2006 cases and later presided over the 2009 case. I argued that he should have recused himself under RULE 51:2.11.
The Commission acknowledged receipt on August 9, 2023.
Its Executive Secretary explained:
“The Commission has authority to investigate complaints alleging ethical misconduct.”
It also explained that if the Commission concluded that a substantial violation had occurred, it could refer the matter to the Iowa Supreme Court and recommend discipline.
But the letter drew an important boundary:
“The Commission does not have authority to overturn a ruling. A ruling can only be overturned by an appellate court.”
So from the beginning, the Commission was not a forum capable of correcting the 2009 conviction itself.
On September 29, 2023, the Commission issued its decision.
It wrote:
“The Commission is not empowered to act as appeals court, to re-evaluate the facts or how a judge interpreted or applied the law in a case, or to overturn a judge's decision in a case.”
It then stated:
“The Commission has completed its consideration of your grievance. It has determined that there is insufficient evidence of judicial misconduct, or insufficient evidence of misconduct that is serious enough to justify public discipline of the judge. Accordingly, the Commission has dismissed the complaint.”
That disposition did not determine whether my 2009 conviction was correct.
It did not re-evaluate the conflicting testimony.
It did not function as an appeal.
And it did not answer the question I had only become capable of asking after obtaining the old records:
What legal consequence should follow when a judge who personally directed an earlier arrest—and recused himself from the resulting prosecution because of that involvement—later presides over another criminal prosecution of the same person, while that person does not know the earlier involvement occurred?
That question remained unresolved.
The chronology is important:
2006 — Van Marel directed my arrest.
2006 — Gordon Allen sought his recusal.
2006 — Van Marel recused himself because of his involvement.
2009 — Van Marel nevertheless presided over another criminal prosecution against me.
2009 — I did not know the earlier involvement or recusal had occurred.
2022 — I obtained the records and discovered it.
2023 — I brought the issue to the Judicial Qualifications Commission, which expressly told me it could not act as an appellate court or overturn the conviction.
And it became one of the issues I later presented in Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa.
What Discovering These Records Did to Me
There is another part of this chronology that a court docket cannot adequately convey.
I did not discover these records from a place of safety or stability.
When I began reconstructing this history in 2022, I was living in my vehicle and had only recently emerged from roughly two decades of recurring homelessness and extreme instability.
Those years had included far more than housing insecurity. I had been robbed repeatedly. I had been openly harassed and physically attacked. I had been held at gunpoint. I had experienced sexual abuse and repeated situations in which other people exploited the vulnerability that came with homelessness.
Those experiences—and the events documented in these articles—have contributed substantially to trauma that I continue to live with.
By 2022, I had already spent years trying to understand why so many things had gone wrong and how I could protect myself from them. That is one reason I had begun studying law while homeless.
Then I opened these old records.
I learned that the legal history I had carried in my memory for sixteen years was not the history preserved by the government.
I had remembered pleading NOT GUILTY, receiving an apology and payment, and being told that something positive had come from the restroom case.
Instead, I found guilty convictions I had not known existed, a plea document I had never signed, an underlying agreement described only as “partially described,” no surviving agreement when Story County searched for it, and records showing that the judge who later convicted me in 2009 had personally directed my earlier arrest and recused himself from that case.
The discovery did not give me closure. It intensified the sense that I had been failed by a legal system I had never been equipped to understand in the first place.
It also gave me resolve.
For years, I had experienced these events primarily as isolated episodes of danger, homelessness, discrimination, and survival. The records gave me a documentary framework for understanding why some of the consequences had followed me for so long—and why simply being told to “move on” was not an answer.
I want the record set straight.
I am not writing this because I enjoy returning to traumatic events. I am writing it because those events remain legally and materially consequential, and because the official record still affects how other people can perceive me.
IV. These Discoveries Became Part One of
Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa
What I discovered in late 2022 did not remain a private records dispute.
After years of homelessness, fear of returning to Iowa, and the continuing consequences of criminal records I maintain should never have existed, I began trying to determine whether any legal remedy remained available.
When I later filed Wilson v. State of Iowa and Kim Reynolds for Iowa, these 2006–2009 events became Part One of that case.
My July 23, 2024 Amended Petition expressly described that section as:
“PART ONE REVISTED: DISCOVERED BEHIND-THE-SCENES FRAUD FROM THE 2006 AND 2009 CASES; LIMITATIONS PERIOD WAS TOLLED, AND COMMENCED HERE”
The petition then identified November 2, 2022 as the point when I ordered the old dockets and learned of acts I alleged had occurred without my knowledge.
In that filing, I explained that the Reliable Street accusations and the apartment denial were what drove me to obtain the old court records in the first place. I also explained that I had not ordered those dockets in 2006 or 2009 because I did not even know what a docket was.
The Amended Petition then set out the three discoveries documented in this article: the disputed May 22 police record, the guilty-plea arrangement I said I had not authorized, and Van Marel's earlier role and later failure to recuse.
I Invoked the Discovery Rule and Equitable Tolling
Because I did not discover those facts until 2022, I argued that the limitations analysis had to account for when the injury was actually discovered.
In the Amended Petition, I cited the discovery rule and equitable tolling and wrote:
“I did not discover evidence that the attorney, Judge Van Marel, and Officer Marshall defrauded me until November 2, 2022, after ordering copies of the dockets in order to attempt to clear these unjust charges from my record.”
I also quoted the discovery rule as providing that a limitations period does not begin until a plaintiff discovers, or reasonably should have discovered, the injury giving rise to the claim.
I further argued that equitable tolling applied because the relevant injuries were not known to me when the original events occurred and that the limitations period therefore should not be treated as though I had possessed these facts in 2006 or 2009.
Whether a court ultimately agrees with that limitations argument is a legal question. But the factual chronology is straightforward: I could not litigate facts I did not know, and the records revealing those facts did not come into my possession until 2022.
That is why Collateral Damage is not merely an article about old court paperwork.
It documents the point at which the legal history I thought I understood became a different case entirely.
Why I Brought the State-Accountability Claim Against Iowa
Rather Than Naming Each Individual as a Defendant
What I discovered in 2022 ultimately became Part One of the State-accountability lawsuit I filed in 2024.
I did not name Gordon Allen, Officer Marshall, or Judge Van Marel as defendants in that action.
Instead, I directed the case principally toward the State of Iowa, arguing that the State bore responsibility for injuries arising through public officials, governmental processes, and rules that I contended had failed to protect ordinary people from this kind of harm.
One doctrine I invoked was respondeat superior, under which an employer or principal may, in appropriate circumstances, be held legally responsible for wrongful acts committed by an employee or agent within the scope of the relevant relationship.
That was one of my legal theories for directing responsibility toward the State. I do not present it here as a judicial determination that Iowa was legally responsible for every person or act described in the petition.
But my purpose was not simply to obtain damages from individual people.
I was asking Iowa to fix the systems that had allowed the harm to occur.
That is why one of the remedies I requested was an amendment to Iowa’s Rules of Professional Conduct creating an attorney-client “Right to Review.”
My Amended Petition asked that clients be given the opportunity to review and authorize material filings made in their names before those filings are submitted. I specifically explained that such a rule would have prevented the dispute I later faced over whether guilty pleas had been authorized.
That requested remedy was never adjudicated on its merits because the case was dismissed before the underlying claims and requested reforms reached trial.
The Court Dismissed the Case Without Adjudicating These Requested Reforms on Their Merits
The district court ultimately dismissed my claims through immunity doctrines and other threshold defenses before these underlying factual disputes and requested structural remedies reached trial.
I do not regard that procedural outcome as a satisfactory resolution of what happened.
I continue to dispute the premise that immunity and other judicially applied doctrines should prevent claims of this kind from receiving meaningful adjudication.
The dismissal ended that stage of the proceeding. It did not make the underlying facts disappear, decide whether the reforms I requested were warranted, or provide the accountability I was seeking.
I continue to pursue available avenues for review and relief.
V. The Two Reforms That Were Born From This
Teach Practical Law to High-School Seniors —
Legal Knowledge Before a Crisis Happens
There is another lesson I take from this history that reaches beyond any one officer, attorney, or judge.
I was completely unprepared for the legal system I had suddenly entered.
I had only recently left high school. I was quietly struggling with something deeply personal, had begun seeking medical care, and was trying to build a life while encountering a level of hostility I had never understood other people were capable of directing at me.
I knew almost nothing about criminal procedure.
I did not know what a docket was.
I did not understand how police reports, complaints, affidavits, and court filings could become part of a permanent government record.
I did not understand how to obtain those records.
I did not know how to challenge false factual statements in them.
I did not know the significance of a plea, a waiver, a recusal motion, preservation of evidence, appellate rights, or the difference between what I personally understood had happened and what the official record might later say happened.
Knowing even the basics would have helped me enormously.
That is why one of the reforms that grew from these experiences is Wild Willpower's Teach Practical Law to High-School Seniors proposal.
The purpose is not to turn teenagers into attorneys. It is to make sure a young person does not first encounter the meaning of a plea, an affidavit, a limitations period, a public record, or a procedural deadline while frightened, isolated, accused of wrongdoing, and already inside the legal system.
Students should graduate knowing at least how to preserve evidence, obtain and read basic government records, understand what they are signing, identify important deadlines, recognize when they need legal help, and know where to begin when police, courts, employers, businesses, or government agencies take action affecting their rights.
Legal literacy is a form of preventive justice.
The Attorney-Client "Right-to-Review"
The first reform addresses what I did not know.
The second addresses what should never be done in a client's name without leaving proof that the client authorized it.
The Board could not determine what had been said in a private conversation seventeen years earlier. That should never be the only evidence available when an attorney makes a decision as consequential as entering a criminal plea in a client's name.
That is why my proposed Attorney-Client “Right to Review” would require informed written authorization before an attorney may make certain decisions that materially affect a client's rights.
Written informed authorization would be required for:
- a plea;
- waiver of trial;
- settlement;
- dismissal with prejudice;
- an admission or stipulation materially affecting the client's rights;
- waiver of appeal; and
- material factual representations supplied in the client's name.
Clients would also receive a meaningful review opportunity before counsel files:
- substantive pleadings;
- affidavits;
- factual statements attributed to the client; or
- filings that materially characterize the client's conduct or position.
The purpose is simple: the client should know what is being filed in the client's name, understand the consequences, and leave behind a written record showing what was actually authorized.
That protects the client. It also protects the attorney.
Had such a record existed here, seventeen years later there would have been no need for the Attorney Disciplinary Board to decide that there was “no independent way to verify” what had happened.
VI. What I Did Not Know About Iowa Then
There is one final part of this history that I only learned while researching this series in 2026.
I did not know in 2006 that Iowa had a long documented history of using law, medicine, policing, confinement, and government records against people whose sexuality, bodies, or gender expression departed from prevailing norms.
I did not know about the old criminal laws. I did not know about the sterilization statutes. I did not know about the Sioux City roundup. I did not know that, in Sommers v. Iowa Civil Rights Commission, Iowa's Supreme Court had expressly acknowledged discrimination against a transsexual woman while holding that the Civil Rights Act then provided her no remedy.
I was not walking into that history knowingly.
I was a young person who was silently suffering, sought medical care, and was stunned by how hostile other people could become because of it.
Looking backward now, I think Iowa still has a great deal of healing to do around this history.
But healing cannot mean simply congratulating ourselves because the most openly brutal forms of persecution are no longer socially acceptable.
It also requires asking what forms the same underlying hostility may take when it becomes less visible.
In earlier generations, discrimination could be written openly into statutes, diagnoses, institutional policies, arrests, and newspaper accounts.
Today, the danger can be harder to see. It can appear in an affidavit a person does not know exists. In a plea filed in a client's name. In a government record the affected person does not know how to obtain. In an administrative process whose rules an ordinary person has never been taught. Or behind professional and institutional doors where the person most affected may have the least ability to understand what is happening.
My contention is not that Iowa in 2026 is identical to Iowa in 1955. It is that changing the form of an injustice does not necessarily mean the underlying problem has disappeared.
If Iowa wants to heal this history, that healing should include the people who are still living with consequences created by its institutions.
We cannot repair the past while ignoring the people who say they are still being injured in the present.
For me, these consequences are not historical abstractions.
I am now 44 years old. I remain financially precarious, with less than $500 available to me as I write this, and I am living in another person's home rather than having the financial stability many people I went to school with were able to build over the same decades.
I see former classmates with homes, vehicles, stable healthcare, careers, and savings. I do not resent them for having those things. But I cannot honestly examine my own life without asking what repeated homelessness, violence, criminal records, litigation, discrimination, and years spent trying to survive have cost me.
Nor has the political environment made these wounds easier to leave behind. Transgender people remain the subject of repeated political attacks, and Iowa has now removed gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Access to gender-related healthcare has also become increasingly uncertain.
For someone already living with unresolved records, unresolved litigation, severe financial insecurity, and the consequences of years of trauma, those decisions do not feel abstract.
They affect whether I feel safe.
They affect whether I believe I will ever be able to afford the healthcare I have spent much of my life seeking.
They affect whether I can rebuild a stable future.
And they compound the fear created by records that I continue to contend should never have existed in their present form.
This is why I cannot simply “move on.”
Moving on would require the past to actually be over.
For me, it is not.
I am still trying to obtain legal review. I am still trying to correct records. I am still trying to understand what occurred behind the scenes. And I am still asking Iowa to confront the human consequences of decisions its institutions made about one of its own citizens.
I am writing this from the best of my memory, supported wherever possible by the contemporaneous documents I have recovered, because I want the record set straight—and because I hope telling the truth about how these decisions affect real lives can open hearts and minds across Iowa.
