The Wyoming Supreme Court held that digital penetration and use of a sexual device qualify as explicit sexual conduct under the child-exploitation statute and upheld an aggregate 21-to-30-year sentence.
The Wyoming Supreme Court upheld a bicycle stop based on an objectively reasonable factual mistake and refused to review issues not specifically preserved in a conditional plea.
Wyoming’s high court held that vulnerable-adult exploitation spanning two counties could be tried in Converse County and affirmed restitution for clothing made inaccessible by the crime.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed Steven Randall Marler’s convictions on eight counts of sexual abuse and six counts of battery against children in his care, holding that the district court properly admitted broad Rule 404(b) “other acts” evidence of grooming rituals and a fear-based disciplinary regimen, that a victim’s collateral lie to a jail guard was excludable without violating the Confrontation Clause, that a rule-of-completeness claim was waived by failure to make an offer of proof, and that brief prosecutorial questioning about a victim’s father’s suicide did not constitute plain-error misconduct.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the termination of both parents’ parental rights to three children under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 14-2-309(a)(v), holding that the statute—requiring only that the child has been in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months and that the parent is unfit—does not impose a reasonable-reunification-efforts requirement; that DFS’s documentation gaps did not reach the structural failure level required by MB; and that clear and convincing evidence of parental unfitness supported the district court’s termination order.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a bench-trial judgment for Katya Hutton against the Estate of Robert P. Dykes, holding the district court did not abuse its discretion in implicitly denying Rule 37 sanctions—no prior order-to-show-cause hearing had been sought, the Estate declined an offered continuance, and trial testimony confirmed Hutton had produced everything in her possession—and that the court did not clearly err in finding the Estate failed to prove Hutton misappropriated condo rental income where the Marriott records it relied on were demonstrably unreliable.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a probation revocation, holding that the district court erred by determining willfulness during the adjudicatory phase rather than the dispositional phase—a clear violation of Wyoming’s two-part revocation framework—but that the error did not constitute plain error because Smith suffered no material prejudice: he presented his willfulness arguments before the court’s finding and again at disposition, and an independently established, uncontested violation independently supported revocation.
The Wyoming Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the denial of Christopher Campbell’s motion to suppress evidence seized from his Evanston residence, holding that Deputy Barker’s search-warrant affidavit established probable cause under the totality-of-circumstances test. The court rejected Campbell’s paragraph-by-paragraph critique of the affidavit as methodologically improper: Wyoming law requires courts to evaluate the affidavit as a whole, not in piecemeal fashion. Viewed in its totality, a convergence of circumstantial links—a matching U-Haul seen at the residence, receipts tying an associate to both the truck and the address, Arizona connections shared by the stolen vehicle and the occupants, and matching tire tracks—established the required nexus between the evidence sought and the place to be searched.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed Albany County’s 2023 amendments to its Aquifer Protection Overlay Zone — including a 35-acre minimum lot size within the Casper Aquifer recharge area — holding that counties may use general zoning authority under Wyo. Stat. Ann. § 18-5-201 to protect groundwater without displacing WDEQ’s water quality jurisdiction. The court also established, for the first time in a published Wyoming opinion, that the arbitrary and capricious standard of review applies to all agency legislative action (rulemaking) under WAPA, resolving a gap left open by Bienz v. Board of County Commissioners, 2024 WY 102. Justice Hill dissented on authority, arguing the EQA grants WDEQ exclusive jurisdiction over water quality regulation.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a finding that a mediated settlement email was unenforceable because the parties never agreed on whether ditch access would be implemented through an easement, license, or other interest and never specified whether a storage restriction would run with the land or remain a personal obligation, leaving essential terms undefined and creating at most an agreement to agree.
The Wyoming Supreme Court reversed and remanded a criminal case in which the district court ordered the defendant to sell a vehicle and deposit the proceeds as a condition of maintaining his public defender appointment. The court held that the subsequent guilty plea did not waive the challenge because the issue was unrelated to guilt or conviction, and that the district court exceeded its statutory authority under Wyoming’s public defender reimbursement statute by compelling a pre-sentencing forced asset liquidation.
The Wyoming Supreme Court reversed a contempt order against the Wyoming Boys’ School for refusing to admit an alleged delinquent juvenile before adjudication. The court held that Wyoming law expressly prohibits pre-adjudication placement at WBS, which is a reformatory for adjudicated delinquents — not a juvenile detention facility — and that the juvenile court abused its discretion by ordering such placement. All three exceptions to the mootness doctrine applied, allowing the court to reach the merits despite the case having been resolved below.
The Wyoming Supreme Court summarily affirmed a divorce decree granting Mother sole custody of ten children and assigning nearly all marital debt to incarcerated Father, holding that Father’s nine-issue opening brief contained no cogent argument — just general legal principles with no case-specific analysis — and that his reply brief improperly raised four new issues while failing to respond to Mother’s arguments. Attorney fees under W.R.A.P. 10.05 were declined as a matter of discretion, but costs were awarded.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the Medical Commission’s denial of workers’ compensation benefits to a claimant who developed pancreatitis after a Depakote dosage increase prescribed for migraines caused by his 2014 compensable head injury, holding that a numerical majority of supporting experts does not satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard and that the Commission acted within its discretion in rejecting an expert’s causation opinion premised on a dosing timeline contradicted by the claimant’s own testimony.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a Park County divorce decree awarding Mother primary custody and $624,500 in equitable distribution, holding that Father’s W.R.C.P. 35 motion for psychological evaluations was untimely and lacked good cause, that the district court properly reached assets Father transferred to his nonprofit during the proceedings under the badges-of-fraud doctrine from Breitenstine, and that Father was barred by invited error from challenging the shared custody arrangement for the family dog.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a child neglect adjudication under plain-error review, holding that a juvenile court’s failure to invite a pro se mother to present opening and closing statements or to cross-examine witnesses was cured mid-hearing when the court three times offered her the opportunity to recall and question any witness—an opportunity she declined.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed summary judgment for a garbage-truck co-employee whose activation of lift arms—from the passenger seat, without seeing where his injured colleague was standing—caused serious hand injuries, holding that multiple safety-rule violations and a poor post-accident response do not establish the particularized knowledge of highly probable harm required to pierce co-employee immunity under the Wyoming Worker’s Compensation Act.
The Wyoming Supreme Court unanimously affirmed consecutive sentences for a former Casper police officer who pleaded guilty to five counts of aggravated assault and battery following a prolonged armed standoff, holding that a plea agreement capping the State’s “sentencing argument” was a non-binding recommendation under W.R.Cr.P. 11(e)(1)(B)—not a stipulated sentence under 11(e)(1)(C)—and that Wyoming district courts need not make specific findings when deviating from a sentencing recommendation.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a juvenile court’s finding that Father neglected his two minor children, holding the court did not abuse its discretion in admitting hair follicle test results collected after the date of alleged neglect, because the tests covered the relevant period and any challenge to their probative force went to weight rather than admissibility.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a district court’s denial of a convicted shoplifter’s Rule 41(g) motion for return of seized property, holding that the State overcame the post-conviction presumption favoring return by presenting credible testimony that the items were likely stolen—and clarifying Wyoming’s burden-shifting framework for such motions for the first time in the context of alleged stolen property.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed dismissal of a daughter’s declaratory judgment action seeking to establish that her late father’s interest in real property passed to his estate rather than to her mother by survivorship. The court held that a 2012 quiet title decree identifying the parents as “Husband and Wife” created a tenancy by the entirety under longstanding Wyoming common law, and that the 2023 codification of that presumption in Wyoming Statute § 34-1-140(b) merely clarified — rather than changed — pre-existing law.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed a default judgment entered against a conservator who waited 190 days to answer counterclaims and then failed to move to set aside the default with any citation to W.R.C.P. 55(c) or 60(b), failed to identify a Rule 60(b) justification, and failed to address the three-factor good cause test. A vague oral request to set aside default, unsupported by legal authority, does not satisfy the moving party’s burden.
The Wyoming Supreme Court reversed a divorce decree that treated all retirement accounts listed in postnuptial agreement exhibits as entirely separate property. The court held that the agreement’s express exclusion of retirement accounts from its “separate property” definition, combined with Paragraph 5(g)’s specific formula dividing pre- and post-June 2017 contributions, required the district court to apply the formula to the listed accounts as well.
The Wyoming Supreme Court affirmed the denial of self-defense immunity to a man who shot and killed his neighbor during a dispute over property boundaries, holding that Wyoming’s castle doctrine presumptions under § 6-2-602(b) and (d) do not extend to outdoor areas such as driveways, and that a defendant’s subjective belief that an intruder was about to enter his home — without objective corroboration — is insufficient to trigger the statutory presumptions.