Grand jury convening to decide if wolf captor Cody Roberts should face felony charges

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  • Mike Koshmrl WyoFile.com
  • Jul 31, 2025 Updated Jul 31, 2025
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Sublette County law enforcement officials are moving forward with a long-delayed legal case that may culminate in a felony animal cruelty indictment of Cody Roberts for his capture and treatment of a wounded wolf in February 2024.

Specifically, a grand jury is being convened to consider the indictment, WyoFile has confirmed with several sources knowledgeable about the proceedings. Summonses have been issued to select a 12-person jury, subpoenas to witnesses are going out imminently and a decision about whether to indict is expected sometime in August, according to the sources.

State wildlife officials cited and fined Roberts last year for illegal possession of wildlife — a misdemeanor — after learning he allegedly struck a young wolf with a snowmobile, taped the hurt animal’s jaw shut and showed it off at a bar in the western Wyoming town of Daniel. But critics complained that he should have faced more severe criminal consequences for allegations that drew global outrage and even a tourism boycott of Wyoming.

Roberts has never commented publicly on the incident. WyoFile’s past attempts to reach him have failed.

Convened perhaps once a decade in the state court system, grand juries are a seldom-used tool that statutorily are kept secret and confidential, said Pat Crank, a former Wyoming attorney general. One purpose of the secrecy is to protect the innocent’s identity, he said, but the structure also allows investigations to advance with subpoena power and without witness tampering, interference and hiding and destruction of evidence.

“A grand jury gives you investigative tools that you don’t have prior to charging,” Crank told WyoFile. “That’s why grand juries are such an amazing tool to ferret out criminality.”

The subpoena power grand juries equip prosecutors with can be especially handy in compelling witness accounts. Crank said he doesn’t know Sublette County prosecuting attorney Clayton Melinkovich, nor was he familiar with Melinkovich’s reasoning, but he surmised the grand jury was related to the difficulty of getting witnesses to speak with authorities.

“None of those people in that bar who watched him do all that (expletive) that he did to that poor wolf are going to rat off this (expletive) and then be a pariah in Sublette County the rest of their life,” Crank said. “I’m guessing that’s probably why he (the prosecutor) did it.”

Reached over the phone last week, Melinkovich told WyoFile he could not say if a grand jury was convening, and he offered no comment.

Back in March, the county attorney explained that the investigation against Roberts was still proceeding more than a year after the fact. Specifically, he said, the county was exploring a charge of felony animal cruelty.

“The statute says ‘an animal,’ and ‘an animal’ includes a predatory animal,” Melinkovich said at the time.

The county attorney cited the Wyoming Criminal Code, which has an exemption for predatory species in the animal cruelty laws, but only for hunting purposes. A person who takes captive and abuses a predatory animal is not fully exempt from the felony animal cruelty laws, he said.

The same criminal code also outlines the grand jury process. To indict, at least nine members of the 12-person panel must agree to bring charges. If an indictment is returned, charges are guaranteed — it immediately becomes the charging document.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department took the lead in responding to the Feb. 29, 2024 incident. The agency’s investigation and subsequent citation were quickly adjudicated without public notice: Roberts, a Daniel resident, was fined $250 for possessing the wolf, though the investigating wardens could have issued steeper penalties and sent the case to court, but declined to take that step.

When Roberts’ stunt with the injured wolf became public a month later, with photos of him and the injured wolf splashed across the internet, the incident became an international source of outrage. Wyoming even convened a “Treatment of Predators Working Group,” which included some members of the Legislature, and that group workshopped a bill intended to deter the torture of predatory animals. That bill proved unpopular and went nowhere, but Jackson Republican Rep. Andrew Byron subsequently spearheaded, and the Legislature passed, the so-called Clean Kill Bill, which stiffened penalties for torturing predatory animals that were in a person’s possession.

Crank, the former Wyoming attorney general, played a role in crafting and passing the legislation. Because Roberts’ actions occurred before the law was crafted, if he’s indicted, he wouldn’t be subject to the stiffened penalties, which took effect on July 1.

Although the grand jury process has begun, it’s not yet common knowledge in Sublette County. Dave Stephens, a county commissioner, had not heard of the confidential proceedings when he spoke with WyoFile on Tuesday night at Pinedale High School, where U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman was holding an unrelated town hall meeting. Most locals, Stephens said, are ready to be done with the ugly incident at the Green River Bar.

“They just wanted it to go away, wish it hadn’t happened, don’t want the publicity,” Stephens said.

But other parties are welcoming the new legal development. Wyoming Wildlife Advocates Executive Director Kristin Combs, who lobbied in Washington, D.C. in response to the wolf-torture incident, was “really pleased” to learn of Sublette County’s progress toward a prosecution.

“I’m really looking forward to what comes out of the grand jury proceedings,” Combs said. “Hopefully justice will be served.”

Grand Jury For Cody Roberts Over Wolf Torture A Rare Route In Wyoming

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A grand jury is being convened for Cody Roberts, the Daniel, Wyoming, man who ran down a wolf, taped its mouth shut and showed it off before killing it in 2024, according to a Wyofile report. Convening a grand jury is rare in Wyoming, but not unheard of.

Clair McFarland

July 31, 20257 min read

https://cowboystatedaily.com/2025/07/31/grand-jury-for-cody-roberts-over-wolf-torture-a-rare-route-in-wyoming/
A grand jury is being convened for Cody Roberts, the Daniel, Wyoming, man who ran down a wolf, taped its mouth shut and showed it off before killing it in 2024, according to a Wyofile report. Convening a grand jury is rare in Wyoming, but not unheard of.
A grand jury is being convened for Cody Roberts, the Daniel, Wyoming, man who ran down a wolf, taped its mouth shut and showed it off before killing it in 2024, according to a Wyofile report. Convening a grand jury is rare in Wyoming, but not unheard of.

Sublette County authorities are calling a grand jury to decide whether to indict Cody Roberts, a Daniel man who ran over a wolf with a snowmobile, brought it muzzled into a bar, then shot it in February 2024.

That’s according to a Wyofile report drawing from anonymous sources familiar with the confidential grand jury impaneling.

Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich, who is bound by confidentiality law, declined Wednesday to confirm whether he’s asked a judge to impanel a grand jury to weigh the controversial act.

Roberts paid $250 last March toward a citation for violating Wyoming Game and Fish regulations against possessing wildlife.

But he could still be charged under a different law if a grand jury sees fit — and if the newer charge differs enough in its elements from the citation to satisfy a judge that Roberts’ right against double jeopardy isn’t being violated.

The incident with the wolf exploded into international headlines, sparking outrage across the country from sportsmen and animal rights activists, and put both the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Wyoming’s wildlife management laws under scrutiny.

In its 2025 legislative session, the state passed a law criminalizing cruelty to wildlife.

A grand jury is being convened for Cody Roberts, the Daniel, Wyoming, man who ran down a wolf, taped its mouth shut and showed it off before killing it in 2024, according to a Wyofile report. Convening a grand jury is rare in Wyoming, but not unheard of.
A grand jury is being convened for Cody Roberts, the Daniel, Wyoming, man who ran down a wolf, taped its mouth shut and showed it off before killing it in 2024, according to a Wyofile report. Convening a grand jury is rare in Wyoming, but not unheard of.

Because They Can Demand Testimony

Indicting people by grand jury is rare across Wyoming’s state courts, but not unheard-of.

Every day across Wyoming, prosecutors charge people via complaint. That is, they compile probable cause statements from law enforcement personnel into an affidavit, find the charges that fit those statements and file them in the local circuit court.

In the case of felonies, the prosecutor must pit his evidence against a defendant’s cross-examination at a preliminary hearing if he wants to show probable cause and launch the case into the felony-level trial court.

That is, unless the defendant opts to skip his preliminary hearing.

With grand juries, the deliberations that lead to a probable cause finding happen behind closed doors in secrecy, without a defense attorney around to ask contradictory questions.

A handful of attorneys who have managed grand jury proceedings say there are different reasons to go that route.

A key reason among those — and a fair guess of what’s driving Sublette County to call a grand jury — is that grand juries can subpoena witnesses and make them talk, said Rock Springs-based attorney Jason Petri.

The Man Who Shoved His Family Off A Cliff

Petri oversaw grand jury proceedings in 2002 in the case of Bob Duke, who had shoved his wife and child off a cliff in the late 1990s.

Petri’s boss was then-Sweetwater County Attorney Harold Moneyhun, who ran the process alongside Petri and the office’s chief deputy, the attorney recalled.

“Oftentimes, a grand jury is useful because, in a normal criminal case the police might go to talk to witnesses or suspects, relatives, whoever — and you don’t have to talk to the police,” Petri said. “You can just say, ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’”

But the grand jury can compel people to testify before it, can ask questions, and can decide whom to call next.

It’s handy when community members may know something about the case but they don’t want to say what that is, Petri said.

That was the case with Duke’s case, where there’d been murmurs of him plotting his wife and child’s death long before it happened. Community members also talked among themselves about a crime for which Duke had already been convicted federally: plotting to kill his parents for insurance money, Petri recalled.

The grand jury “called in everybody who might know something, put them under oath,” Petri said.

That power isn’t absolute, he noted: People who can articulate some potential self incrimination (or spousal privilege) can assert their Fifth Amendment right to remain silent.

Duke’s grand jury worked on his case for a month.

At the end, the jurors filed a “true bill,” or green light to indict, rather than a “no bill,” which is a statement denying the prosecutor the option to charge someone from their findings.

The things those jurors documented remain confidential today, said Petri.

“In fact, there’s a box full of the grand jury materials in the county attorney storage room,” he said. “It’s still taped up and has a big warning sign that says it’s never to be opened unless you have a court order from the district court or higher.”

Still, word gets out in a small town.

Defense attorneys and others in Green River probably came to their own conclusions when one room in the courthouse was occupied for a month and three prosecutors were missing from daily court hearings, Petri said with a chuckle.

Because Of Nefarious Actors

Former Fremont County Attorney Patrick LeBrun ran a grand jury proceeding in about 2010 while working as deputy for his then-boss Brian Varn, he recalled to Cowboy State Daily.

Another deputy in the office, Kathy Kavanaugh, ran the proceeding alongside him, LeBrun said.

It was a drug conspiracy case with around 30 suspects-turned-defendants.

The prosecutors didn’t choose the grand jury because of its subpoena powers or because of the efficiency that process can bring to cases with numerous defendants, LeBrun said. They chose that charging route because of its secrecy.

Rather than file all 30 cases one by one, in the public and open court, they compiled those cases simultaneously, in secret, so that they didn’t tip off potential co-conspirators before they were ready to charge them all.

“It allows some due process to occur without exposing the case to nefarious individuals who might like to know about it,” said LeBrun.

But under normal circumstances, LeBrun said he has preferred the usual route of charging the case in circuit court and having a public and adversarial hearing to determine probable cause.

The adversarial route gives him a better idea how strong the case is, he said.

Petri noted in his own interview that grand juries’ lack of cross-examination by the defense is a criticism many detractors have against their use. 

Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric had brought in his own grand jury prior to Fremont County’s, so he visited LeBrun and Kavanaugh to help them learn how to run the proceeding, LeBrun said.

In fact, he added, impaneling grand juries was somewhat a fad in that era.

For Efficiency, For Propriety

Sweetwater County Attorney Dan Erramouspe pursued charges in two grand jury cases in late 2015 and early 2016, he told Cowboy State Daily.

The same panel oversaw both cases since the jurors are available for a year after they’re first called, he said.

One case dealt with a drug trafficking organization and around 35 defendants.

Efficiency was a key reason for having the grand jury oversee that one, said Erramouspe.

Rather than having prosecutors attend potentially 35 preliminary hearings (which range from about 10 minutes to five hours in length), the grand jury compiled enough evidence on all defendants to send their cases to the felony-level court in one batch.

The same set of jurors reviewed evidence in the case of Jacob Anglesey, a former Green River Police Department officer who was ultimately convicted of manslaughter in the death of a 2-year-old boy hurt while in his care.

Having 12 of Anglesey’s peers decide whether he was chargeable rather than making the choice himself was about propriety, Erramouspe recalled.

The case was seven years old. A special prosecutor had already gone through the evidence and hadn’t brought charges.

Erramouspe was new to his career as county attorney and wanted to distance himself from any implication that Anglesey’s charging was political, he said.

The grand jury indicted on a first-degree murder variation called felony murder, which was later pled down to voluntary manslaughter.

A judge sentenced Anglesey to between 16 and 20 years in prison — nearly the maximum allowed under the law.

Joyce-led measure to expand hunting permit eligibility signed into law

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Landowners and farmers will now have more flexibility when it comes to hunting on their own property after legislation from State Senator Patrick Joyce was signed into law on Friday.

House Bill 2340 allows landowner deer, turkey and hunting permits to be issued without charge to Illinois landowners who own at least 20 acres in a county where there is positively identified chronic wasting disease cases in the deer herd, resident tenants of at least 20 acres of commercial agricultural land where they will hunt, or an owner, shareholder or partner of a business that owns at least 20 acres of land.

Joyce took on the legislation in response to farmers and landowners having difficulties securing permits to hunt on their own land. Residents of hunting land in the 40th District and across Illinois have been calling for changes to landowner permits and the deer permit lottery.

House Bill 2340 goes into effect Jan. 1, 2026.