Background
From 2008 to 2022, Steven Randall Marler and his wife fostered dozens of children and legally adopted eight of them. In 2023, a third girl in the household reported sexual abuse, triggering an investigation that led to seventeen charges. After an eleven-day jury trial in Natrona County District Court, Marler was convicted of fourteen counts: eight felonies for sexual abuse of a minor in the first, second, and third degree against several victims, and six misdemeanor counts of battery and child endangerment. The district court sentenced him to aggregate consecutive terms totaling 125 to 175 years on the felonies plus over 1,200 days on the misdemeanors.
Before trial, the State filed four separate notices of intent to introduce evidence under Wyoming Rule of Evidence (W.R.E.) 404(b)—the “other acts” rule. The evidence fell into four categories: (1) a daily practice Marler called the “daddy tax,” in which children were required to give him nude massages in his bedroom, which multiple witnesses described as escalating toward sexual contact; (2) a disciplinary regimen of spankings with belts, boards, and rubber strips, forced exercise circuits of up to 100 repetitions each, and systematic food deprivation; (3) uncharged incidents of Marler watching the children shower or undress; and (4) threats, manipulation, and physical punishment designed to prevent the children from disclosing the abuse. The district court admitted all of it after finding each category served a proper Rule 404(b) purpose and that its probative value outweighed the risk of unfair prejudice.
Marler appealed, raising five issues: (1) that the Rule 404(b) evidence was irrelevant, cumulative, or unfairly prejudicial; (2) that the district court violated his confrontation rights by barring cross-examination of victim KPM about a false statement she made to a detention-center employee; (3) that the district court violated the rule of completeness (W.R.E. 106) by refusing to play a full 65-minute recorded police interview after the State introduced four excerpts; (4) that the State committed prosecutorial misconduct by eliciting testimony about victim AW’s father’s suicide; and (5) that cumulative error denied him a fair trial.
The Court’s Holding
Affirmed. A unanimous Wyoming Supreme Court, in an opinion by Justice Jarosh, rejected all five assignments of error. On Rule 404(b), the court held that the punishment evidence—the spankings, forced exercise, and food deprivation—was properly admitted to show Marler’s motive and plan to induce compliance and maintain a “culture of silence” that enabled the sexual abuse. The court also rejected the argument that the “daddy tax” massage evidence was unnecessarily cumulative: though multiple witnesses testified about it, the district court properly limited each to their own firsthand experience, and the recurring pattern itself was the probative point. “[T]he pattern of behavior,” the court explained, “directly illuminated Mr. Marler’s motive and systematic course of conduct.”
On the confrontation issue, the court held that excluding KPM’s false statement to a jail guard—made during a break in her forensic interview, unrelated to the investigation—was within the district court’s discretion. The Confrontation Clause guarantees an opportunity for effective cross-examination, not unlimited cross-examination on any matter, however collateral; and the jury already had extensive evidence from which to assess KPM’s credibility. On the rule of completeness, the claim was waived entirely: defense counsel never made an offer of proof after the court denied the request, stripping the trial court of any opportunity to reconsider and leaving nothing for appellate review. See Silva v. State, 2012 WY 37, ¶ 21, 271 P.3d 443, 450. “[F]ailure to make an offer of proof must result in a waiver.” Id.
The prosecutorial misconduct claim failed plain-error review. The brief questioning about AW’s father’s suicide served a legitimate purpose: it contextualized AW’s emotional state when she came to live with the Marlers and rebutted Marler’s theory that the victims fabricated abuse allegations in order to return to their biological families. Crucially, the jury acquitted Marler of the sexual abuse charges involving AW—which the court held negated any claim the questioning inflamed the jury or affected the verdict. With no errors identified, the cumulative-error argument failed as well.
Key Takeaways
- Under W.R.E. 404(b), a defendant’s disciplinary regimen designed to instill fear and silence in child victims is admissible to show motive, intent, and course of conduct in a sexual abuse prosecution—even if only a subset of that physical misconduct is charged.
- Grooming evidence involving repeated physical contact with multiple victims is not excludable as cumulative where each witness testifies only to their own experience; Wyoming courts take an “expressly liberal approach” to Rule 404(b) admissibility when the defendant denies the conduct and credibility is genuinely contested.
- A defendant who fails to make an offer of proof after a trial court excludes evidence waives appellate review of that ruling entirely—this applies with full force even to recorded material like a 65-minute police interview. Silva v. State, 2012 WY 37.
- A victim’s collateral falsehood made to a non-investigator during a break in a forensic interview carries minimal impeachment value and may be excluded without implicating the Confrontation Clause, provided the jury has adequate independent means to assess credibility.
- Prosecutorial questioning about a victim’s background does not constitute misconduct when it is brief, factual, directly responsive to the defense theory, and the verdict on the related charges negates any inference of prejudice.
- Wyoming’s plain-error standard requires the defendant to establish all three elements—a clear record, a clear violation of law, and material prejudice—and failing any one is fatal to the claim.
Why It Matters
For Wyoming criminal practitioners, Marler v. State is the most detailed Wyoming Supreme Court treatment in recent years of Rule 404(b) admissibility in a multi-victim child sexual abuse prosecution. The court gave substantial deference to the district court’s four-part Gleason analysis and five-factor probative-value framework, approving a broad range of uncharged conduct—physical punishment, food deprivation, grooming massages, threats of retaliation—as legitimate contextual evidence. The opinion reinforces that when a defendant flatly denies the charged conduct, the door to Rule 404(b) evidence opens wide: evidence of motive, course of conduct, and family dynamics all become “particularly probative” precisely because credibility is contested.
The procedural holding on offers of proof is an equally important lesson. If a trial court excludes evidence over objection—whether a document, a recording, or oral testimony—Wyoming trial counsel must make a formal offer of proof by entering the excluded material into the record outside the jury’s hearing. Skipping that step, as happened here with a 65-minute police interview, forfeits the issue on appeal without exception. Defense attorneys handling complex criminal trials in Wyoming courts should treat the offer-of-proof obligation as non-negotiable any time the court rules evidence out.