Justices uphold Marion man’s conviction for fatally stabbing Chris Bagley

Updated Oct. 28

CEDAR RAPIDS — The Iowa Supreme Court has upheld a Linn County jury’s conviction of a Marion man who fatally stabbed Chris Bagley in 2018, after prosecutors asked the court to review an appeals court decision.

The court ruled Friday that the trial judge didn’t abuse his discretion, as the Iowa Court of Appeals had determined in February, to give a verdict- urging instruction to jurors who were deadlocked 11-1 in the 2021 trial of Johnny Blahnik Church, 35, formerly known as Drew Blahnik.

During the trial, the jurors sent three notes at different times, saying they didn’t think they could reach a verdict. But the judge’s instructions sent back to them weren’t “coercive,” as the appeals court had stated, said Justice Christopher McDonald, writing for the state Supreme Court.

The instruction given by 6th Judicial District Judge Bruns was “broad and was directed to each and all of the jurors rather than those in the minority,” McDonald noted. The instruction urged unanimity but also provided that the jury should do so only “if possible” and only if the jurors could “conscientiously do so.”

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Stewart Bagley, Chris Bagley’s father, told The Gazette on Friday he had been up since 4:30 a.m., waiting for the ruling to be filed. He was told the ruling upheld the verdict, but he hadn’t been able yet to read the entire opinion.

“It’s a big, big sigh of relief,” he said. “The whole family is so happy. Most have been up all night. We are ecstatic. It’s such a great weight off our shoulders that we don’t have to go through that trial again.”

First Assistant Linn County Attorney Monica Slaughter said she and assistant Jennifer Erger and now retired Linn County Attorney Jerry Vander Sanden, who prosecuted the case, are “grateful” that the Iowa Attorney General’s Office sought further review and for the Supreme Court agreeing to uphold the verdict.

“We had the upmost confidence that our trial judge, Christopher Bruns, gave an appropriate, non-coercive verdict urging instruction as he is always meticulous in the decisions that he makes and always plays by the book,” Slaughter told The Gazette. “He relied on well-established precedent in drafting that instruction and thoughtfully crafted it in a way that would not violate the defendant's constitutionally protected rights.”

Slaughter said they are thankful the Bagley family won’t have to “suffer by having this case retried and can finally get the closure that they deserve. Justice was served today.”

Leon Spies, lawyer of Blahnik Church, said in a statement that a unanimous panel of the court of appeals found his client had been “denied a fair trial when a holdout juror was effectively coerced into agreeing to a guilty verdict by the trial court’s jury instruction.”

“Of course, I respect the ruling of the Supreme Court. But it’s extremely difficult to explain to Mr. Church and his family how the earlier grant of a new trial is now vacated by the Court’s unanimous opinion to the contrary.”

McDonald, in the ruling, said the jurors told the judge that one juror failed to follow the specific rules on the jury instructions related to Blahnik Church’s justification defense and the instruction of using deadly force.

The record doesn’t “support the court of appeals’ characterization” of the majority jurors’ feelings toward the hold out juror, McDonald wrote. The Iowa Court of Appeals, in overturning the verdict, stated the majority juror had expressed “animosity” toward the holdout juror. The appeals court found the jury’s notes “disparaged” the holdout and notes from the jurors “revealed open hostility” toward the lone holdout juror.

The jury’s notes to the judge stated one juror was “failing to follow,” “refusing to follow,” and “deliberately not following” the court’s instructions, McDonald said. The notes were direct but there’s no evidence of “disparagement, hostility or an unusually open expression of animosity,” he wrote.

Neither the trial judge nor the attorneys characterized the majority juror’s views in that way. In Blahnik Church’s motion for new trial, he also didn’t characterize the jurors like that, and not even on appeal, according to the ruling,

“The court of appeals took artistic license here, but the picture painted lacks fidelity to the record and the parties’ arguments,” McDonald wrote.

The appeals court’s focus on the purported “ire” of the majority missed the relevant inquiry in analyzing a verdict-urging instruction, the ruling stated. The psychological pressure jurors place on each other in trying to reach a unanimous verdict is inherent in the jury process.

However, “we are not so concerned with the inherent psychological pressure jurors place on each other during deliberation,” McDonald said in the ruling. The court was more concerned about whether the judge’s instruction improperly coerced or helped coerce a verdict. or if the instruction encouraged the jurors to give up their “conscientiously held positions.” Bruns’ instruction did neither, the ruling said.

Blahnik Church was sentenced last year to 57 years in prison for convictions of second-degree murder, abuse of a corpse and obstruction of prosecution. He and Drew Wagner got in a fight Dec. 14, 2018, with Bagley, 31, of Walker. Wagner held him while Blahnik Church stabbed him 13 times in his neck and torso.

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