Iowa appeals court upholds arson and attempted murder ruling

The Iowa Court of Appeals has upheld all six convictions of an Iowa City man who set fire in 2021 to his former girlfriend’s apartment while she, her three children and her boyfriend were inside.

Ishmael Carter, 34, was sentenced in 2023 to 50 years in prison on one charge of arson and five counts of attempted murder. He appealed, arguing the evidence was not sufficient to support the jury’s convictions.

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According to the ruling, filed Oct. 30, Carter had run into the woman in June 2021 while she was on a walk with her new boyfriend. They had gotten into a fight and police were called. A week later, the woman — Chadsitty Brown — called 911 at 10:45 p.m. to report that Carter was knocking at her apartment door at 612 E. Court St. in Iowa City.

She ended the call after she thought he left, but called back at 11:13 p.m. because her apartment door was on fire.

Carter was seen on surveillance video purchasing lighter fluid from a gas station in between the time the knocking ended and when the fire started. He was standing nearby the apartment while police and firefighters were on scene, and was arrested by an officer who recognized him. He was found guilty on all six charges in a jury trial.

“Carter’s challenge to his arson-in-the-first-degree conviction is straightforward. He does not claim the State failed to prove that someone did all the acts described in the above instruction. He simply contends the State failed to prove he is the person that did them,” the ruling reads.

The appeals court upheld the convictions, stating that the evidence presented in the trial, although circumstantial, was sufficient to convince a reasonable juror that Carter was the one who started the fire.

The evidence presented included location tracking data from his cellphone that showed he was at Brown’s apartment, then went to a gas station — where he was seen purchasing lighter fluid — and returned to Brown’s apartment at the time the fire started. An empty bottle of lighter fluid was found in a trash bin of Brown’s apartment complex that was the same brand Carter purchased and had one of Carter’s fingerprints on it.

Carter also argued against the attempted murder charges, stating there wasn’t enough evidence to prove he specifically intended to cause the death of the occupants.

“Carter contends (1) knocking on the door shows an intent to make sure no one was home; (2) he knew the woman’s apartment had a balcony that would have provided an escape route; and (3) he knew the woman had a cellphone to summon rescue from the fire,” the ruling notes.

But the appeal judges pushed back against Carter’s claims, stating there was evidence Carter looked through the gap under the door while he was knocking, so he should have known someone was in the home, and that the balcony couldn’t be assumed to be a reasonable escape route for five people because the apartment was on the third floor.

The ruling also points out that people often do die in fires even when fire departments are called, so the fact that the occupants had cellphones didn’t change the fact that setting fire to the door could have killed them.

“Reasonable jurors could have concluded Carter intended to kill all five occupants of the apartment. As a result, substantial evidence supports the jury’s determination that Carter is guilty of five counts of attempted murder,” the ruling states.

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