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275 N.W.2d 422

State v. Thomas

Supreme Court of Iowa

Decided February 21, 1979

Supreme Court of Iowa · decided 1979-02-21

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1979-02-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 13 later decisions — most recently September 2005

13 state decisions

801979198019902000decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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UHLENHOPP, Justice

¶1(dissenting).

¶2Suppose that on a single occasion a person with no previous convictions for driving violations operates a car (1) while intoxicated, (2) in excess of the statutory limit, and (3) while his driver’s license is suspended, and is convicted of all three offenses. Under the court majority’s construction of § 321.555(1), this hypothetical driver would be an instant habitual offender. I agree with the District Judge that a person who commits simultaneous offenses is not an “habitual” offender. “Habitual” connotes more than a single occasion. It means “customary” or “usual.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1961). I would therefore affirm the judgment.

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