Background
In mid-June 2025, JC (Father) drove from Wyoming to Nebraska to pick up AI (Mother) and their two minor children, AC and BI, for a visit. The arrangement unraveled quickly. On June 22, 2025, Father and Mother had a dispute, and Father took the children to a Motel 6 in Wheatland, Wyoming after Mother sent text messages suggesting she might harm herself. The following day, Mother called the Wheatland Police Department and alleged that Father had been injecting methamphetamine into his neck and might abscond with the children.
The responding officer encountered Father at the motel and observed the children in his care. Father agreed to a urinalysis (UA) test, which returned a presumptive positive for methamphetamine. Father admitted he had used methamphetamine approximately three days before picking up Mother and the children. When the officer followed up with Mother, she too admitted to using methamphetamine the night before, claiming she had used a pipe found in Father’s bedroom. On the basis of Father’s positive UA, his admission, and both parents’ acknowledged recent drug use, the officer placed AC and BI in protective custody on June 23, 2025.
The State of Wyoming filed a neglect petition against both parents under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 14-3-202(a)(vii), which defines neglect as a failure to provide adequate care, maintenance, or supervision necessary for a child’s well-being. At the August 2025 adjudicatory hearing in Platte County District Court, Father moved in limine to exclude any evidence arising outside June 22 and 23, 2025—the dates referenced in the petition—as irrelevant. He also challenged the State’s introduction of hair follicle test results. The children’s hair follicles had been collected by the Department of Family Services (DFS) after removal consistent with its standard protocol in drug cases; one child’s sample was not collected until July 15. The tests returned positive for methamphetamine, amphetamine, and marijuana. Father objected that the tests, collected after June 23, could not prove what happened on the date of the alleged neglect. The juvenile court overruled the objection and ultimately found both parents had neglected the children. Father appealed.
The Court’s Holding
A unanimous Wyoming Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by Justice Jarosh, affirmed the neglect finding and rejected both of Father’s evidentiary challenges.
On the admissibility of the hair follicle tests, the court applied an abuse-of-discretion standard. Under Wyoming Rule of Evidence 401, evidence is relevant if it tends to make a fact of consequence more or less probable. The court held the hair follicle tests easily cleared that bar. Though collected on June 24 (and retested on July 15 for one child), the tests cover approximately three months of exposure history—a period that necessarily included June 23. The juvenile court had specifically found the tests “encapsulated” June 23 and were evidence that the children were exposed to methamphetamine on that date. The Supreme Court agreed this was a reasonable conclusion. It further noted that Father’s argument—that the tests could not pinpoint exposure to a specific date—went to the weight of the evidence, not its admissibility. Under Wyoming’s standard of review, appellate courts do not reweigh evidence.
On the motions in limine, the court rejected Father’s contention that the juvenile court violated its own pre-hearing ruling. Father had read the ruling as barring all evidence outside June 22–23; the juvenile court had actually ruled only that evidence of the children’s prior DFS involvement required proper W.R.E. 404(b) notice. For all other evidentiary objections, the court reserved ruling until the evidence was offered. When Father objected to the hair follicle tests at the hearing, the court considered and overruled the objection after concluding the tests were relevant. That process, the Supreme Court held, was fully consistent with the oral ruling and not an abuse of discretion. The court also declined to review Father’s unpreserved foundation objection—that no expert had laid proper foundation for the test results—because Father had not raised that specific objection at the hearing.
Key Takeaways
- In Wyoming juvenile neglect proceedings, hair follicle test results are admissible even when the tests are collected after the date of alleged neglect, as long as the test period covers that date. Challenges to the probative weight of the results—not their relevance—are for the finder of fact to resolve.
- Arguments that post-event evidence cannot establish what occurred on a specific date go to weight, not admissibility, and Wyoming appellate courts will not reweigh the evidence.
- Foundation objections to expert or scientific evidence must be raised at the time the evidence is offered; failure to object on foundation grounds at the hearing forfeits the issue on appeal.
- A juvenile court’s motion in limine ruling reserving further objections to a “case-by-case basis” is not a blanket exclusion; it preserves the court’s discretion to consider specific objections as evidence is tendered.
- A neglect finding need not rest on any single piece of evidence. The court here relied on the positive UA, Father’s admission of methamphetamine use days before removal, the pipe in Father’s room, officer observations, and the hair follicle results collectively.
Why It Matters
For Wyoming family law practitioners, In re AC and BI confirms that DFS’s standard protocol of collecting hair follicle samples from children at removal is legally sound—the test results can be admitted at adjudicatory hearings even when sampling occurs after the date of alleged neglect. Parents challenging neglect findings should be aware that relevance objections to post-removal evidence face a low bar: courts need only find that the evidence makes a fact of consequence somewhat more or less probable, and hair follicle tests covering the relevant period easily satisfy that standard.
The decision also reinforces a practical point for trial practitioners in juvenile proceedings: preserve your objections with specificity. Father’s failure to raise a foundation objection at the hearing cost him any appellate review of that argument. And if you intend to rely on a pre-hearing ruling to exclude evidence, get the scope of that ruling clearly on the record—the court here found that Father had simply misread what the juvenile court had actually ruled. In Wyoming’s direct-appeal structure, where the Supreme Court hears all appeals without an intermediate appellate court, these procedural missteps arrive at the state’s highest court without a second chance below.