Background
A Campbell County jury convicted James Neil Todd of attempted sexual exploitation of a child after an encounter in a Walmart restroom. A five-year-old boy told his mother, a responding officer, and later the jury that Todd entered the restroom with his penis exposed and asked whether the child wanted to touch it. Todd denied making the request. He told officers that an urgent medical need caused him to expose himself before reaching a urinal and that the child may have misunderstood an ordinary greeting.
The State charged Todd under Wyoming’s child-sexual-exploitation statute and the general attempt statute. The jury found him guilty, and the district court imposed a five-to-eight-year prison term, suspended in favor of 365 days in jail and three years of supervised probation. On appeal, Todd argued that the evidence did not establish a “lascivious exhibition” of his genitals and that the trial court should have given his proposed instruction defining “lascivious.” Those arguments required the Wyoming Supreme Court to identify the particular form of “explicit sexual conduct” the evidence supported.
The Court’s Holding
The Wyoming Supreme Court unanimously affirmed. Justice Fenn explained that Todd and, to a lesser extent, the State had focused on the wrong statutory theory. Wyoming Statute § 6-4-303(b)(ii) prohibits knowingly causing, inducing, enticing, or coercing a child to engage in or be used for explicit sexual conduct. The statutory definition of explicit sexual conduct lists several alternatives, including masturbation and lascivious exhibition. The relevant question was therefore not whether Todd’s own exposure was lascivious, but whether the conduct he allegedly tried to induce the child to perform fit one of those alternatives.
Using the ordinary dictionary meaning of masturbation—manual stimulation of one’s own or another person’s genital organs—the court held that the child’s testimony supplied sufficient evidence. Viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, asking the child to touch Todd’s exposed penis was an effort to induce manual stimulation. The jury could also find the required substantial step for attempt: Todd exposed himself and made the request, conduct strongly corroborative of an intent to complete the offense. Because the child declined, the prosecution properly relied on Wyoming’s general attempt statute rather than proof of a completed act.
The court also rejected the instructional challenge. Although the parties left “lascivious exhibition” in the instruction’s broader definition of explicit sexual conduct, that concept was not necessary to the prosecution’s masturbation theory. The court’s earlier decision in Craft v. State had used an ordinary definition of “lascivious” to evaluate the evidence there, but it did not transform the word into a technical legal term or require that definition in later cases. With no special statutory definition, the trial court could allow jurors to apply the word’s plain meaning and reasonably concluded that Todd’s proposed definition could confuse them.
Key Takeaways
- Wyoming’s definition of explicit sexual conduct contains alternative categories. The State need prove only the category supported by its theory and evidence, not every term included in a definitional instruction.
- A request that a child touch an adult’s genitals can support attempted sexual exploitation through the statute’s “masturbation” category, even if no touching occurs and the adult’s exposure is not independently shown to be lascivious.
- For attempt liability, exposing the genitals and making the request can constitute a substantial step because those acts strongly corroborate an intent to induce the prohibited conduct.
- A word discussed or defined in an appellate sufficiency analysis does not automatically become a technical term that must be separately defined for a jury.
Why It Matters
Todd gives Wyoming criminal practitioners a cleaner way to analyze charges under § 6-4-303: identify exactly which listed form of explicit sexual conduct the defendant allegedly caused or tried to cause the child to perform. Defense and prosecution arguments framed around the adult’s exposure may miss the statutory focus when the alleged inducement is touching that qualifies as masturbation. Charging documents, motions for judgment of acquittal, and proposed instructions should track that distinction.
The decision also cautions counsel against treating every definition used in a prior Wyoming Supreme Court opinion as mandatory jury-instruction language. Unless the legislature or controlling precedent gives a term a specialized legal meaning, Wyoming trial courts retain substantial discretion to rely on ordinary meaning and to reject added wording that could distract from the actual theory of liability.