James Exline is handcuffed in 2018 after a judge sentenced him to 75 years in prison. HERALD FILE PHOTO

Exline loses court appeal

Sentence upheld

By JARED STRONG

j.strong@carrollspaper.com

The 49-year-old rural Jefferson man who sexually abused his daughter lost his first appeal of his convictions and his 75-year prison sentence, according to court records.

James Hubert Exline Jr. was convicted by jurors of two felony sex abuse charges in 2018 for abusing his daughter for about a year when she was ages 11 and 12.

Exline — who was already a registered sex offender for another crime about a decade earlier — began abusing her after he discovered that his son had been abusing her.

The girl was murdered by another brother before Exline was formally accused of the crimes and therefore could not testify directly at his trial. 

In his appeal, Exline argued that the testimony of a nurse who evaluated the girl in regard to the abuse claims should have been excluded because it was improper hearsay.

Generally, statements from witnesses about what other people said to them is not allowed as evidence at a trial.

However, the Iowa Court of Appeals ruled that there are exceptions for hearsay when it involves a medical diagnosis or treatment and denied Exline’s appeal last week.

“The court has affirmed that Mr. Exline received a fair trial,” said Greene County Attorney Thomas Laehn, who helped prosecute Exline.

Exline must serve 85 percent of his sentence before he is eligible for parole. That is about 64 years.

The judge who sentenced him in August 2018 could have given him a shorter sentence that would have made Exline eligible for parole in about 42 years, but didn’t.

“I consider you to be extremely dangerous,” District Judge James Drew said at the time. “I consider these crimes to be as serious as any crime that could possibly be committed.

“Even more troubling is the fact that you did this to your own daughter.”

The brother who also abused the girl, Noah Exline, received a suspended prison sentence last year after he pleaded guilty to one charge of indecent contact with a child. He was 16 at the time of his crimes.

The girl’s stepbrother, Patrick Ryan Thompson, was sentenced to life in prison for igniting the fire that killed the girl and her cousin at their grandmother’s house in Guthrie Center in May 2017.

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