Rock Valley, Iowa — A Rock Valley man’s conviction on charges of Attempted Murder and Voluntary Manslaughter will stand. That decision from the Iowa Court of Appeals.
Sixty-four-year-old Philip Ter Maat was accused of killing his wife Melinda in 2002. Her body was found along a recreation trail in Rock Valley.
Ter Maat plea bargained a murder charge down to Attempt to Commit Murder and Voluntary Manslaughter, and did not appeal his conviction or the sentence.
However, in 2010 he filed a motion for correction of an illegal sentence, claiming that the two convictions violated the state’s “one death, one homicide” rule. The appeals court disagreed.
They said that “Attempt To Commit Murder” is not a homicide offence, it is only an attempt to commit homicide. The court drew a definition for homicide from a 2009 case that said that homicide is the killing of one person by another. Since “Attempt to Commit Murder” does not result in the killing of another person, they reasoned that it is not a homicide offense, and so Ter Maat’s conviction should stand.
