The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of a human trafficking charge and clarified that, under the 2024 statute, a defendant cannot commit human trafficking by attempting to buy sex from a victim who does not exist. In a unanimous decision filed on June 19, 2026, the Iowa Supreme Court in State v. Lind held that, under the 2024 version of Iowa Code section 710A.1(4)(b), “knowingly . . . attempting to purchase services involving commercial sexual activity from a victim or another person engaged in human trafficking” requires an actual victim or other person actually engaged in human trafficking. The statute does not encompass conduct of a defendant who merely believes a victim exists. The Court was careful to cabin its holding to the 2024 statute, noting that a 2025 amendment now expressly reaches conduct like that of the defendant in this case.

This case began with a police sting operation. After Kevin Charles Lind allegedly offered a prostitute money to “find a friend who had a young girl he could” molest, the prostitute went to the police who then put Lind in contact with a female undercover officer. This officer operated under the codename “Kami.” Kami played the part of a prostitute who had a thirteen-year-old daughter named “Destini.” The officer (Kami) sent Lind photos of Destini that were actually just age-regressed images of a police officer. Destini was a completely fictional person. Lind and Kami nonetheless negotiated a plan under which Lind would meet Kami and Destini at a motel and pay $1,300 for sex acts with both of them. Lind arrived at the motel with over $1,500 in cash and was arrested on the spot. The State charged him with human trafficking as a class “A” felony under Iowa Code section 710A.2(1), but the district court dismissed the charge, and the State appealed.

The central question on appeal was whether Lind’s alleged conduct fell within the statutory definition of human trafficking when there was never any real victim or any real person engaged in human trafficking.

The dispute on the merits of the case narrowed in on a single phrase. The State relied only on subsection (4)(b), which defines human trafficking to “also mean[] knowingly purchasing or attempting to purchase services involving commercial sexual activity from a victim or another person engaged in human trafficking.” In the State’s view, the word “attempting” meant it did not matter whether a real victim existed. Therefore, all that mattered was that Lind believed real people were involved and acted on that belief by driving to the motel with cash. The district court, by contrast, interpreted the phrase to require an actual victim or actual trafficker.

The Court began from first principles, emphasizing that “[i]n Iowa, [m]atters of crime and punishment are creatures of statute,” so the judicial task is to interpret the text and give the legislature’s words their fair meaning. Reading the phrase in (4)(b) in its ordinary sense, the Court explained that it “is most naturally read to mean that there must be an actual ‘victim’ or other ‘person engaged in human trafficking.’” Therefore, because Lind’s transaction was entirely pretend, the phrase did not reach him. The State argued that “attempt” carries a “technical meaning in the law” that requires only intent plus an act in furtherance of that intent, regardless of factual possibility. But the Court explained that a term’s established legal meaning does not automatically govern when the context points the other way. In this case, the surrounding body of law pointed decisively against the State.

That context was the heart of the opinion. The Court walked through the legislative history of Iowa’s sex-crime statutes and found a telling pattern: when the legislature wanted a statute to reach undercover officers posing as victims, it expressly said so. It did so in the 2012 solicitation offense, section 710A.2A, and again in 2023 when it added undercover-law-enforcement language to sections 710.10, 728.12, and 728.15. Yet the legislature never added such language to the human trafficking statute, even while amending that very statute in the same sessions. Under the canons of selective placement and against surplusage, that silence was meaningful: the State’s reading would render the legislature’s deliberate “law enforcement officer or agent” language mere surplusage in the statutes that contain it. As the Court put it, “the legislature knows how to authorize sting operations when it wants to.”

The 2025 amendments sealed the conclusion. That year, the legislature expanded the definitions of both “human trafficking” and “victim” to expressly include a law enforcement officer or agent posing as a person subjected to or engaged in trafficking, the exact sting tactic used against Lind. Because “‘a material change’ in statutory language is presumed to ‘change the force and effect of the existing law,’” the Court inferred that those tactics were not authorized under the earlier 2024 statute. The Court rejected the State’s warning that this reading would “end all Iowa sting operations,” explaining that the legislature has now added the missing authorization. The Court also noted that it is not free to “expand criminal liability beyond what the legislature has created.” And even if doubt lingered, the rule of lenity would resolve it in the defendant’s favor.

The result is a straightforward ruling with an important limitation. Under the 2024 statute, attempting to buy sex from an imaginary victim is not human trafficking, and the dismissal of the charge against Lind stands. But the decision is expressly limited to the 2024 law before its amendment. The Court signaled that the same conduct would “likely fall within the definition of human trafficking” under the amended 2025 statute. For Iowa prosecutors, the takeaway is that the gap exposed in Lind has already been closed going forward, and that, in criminal cases, the words the legislature actually enacted will control over the result the State would prefer.

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