January 28 Hearing Could Dismiss Charges Against Cody Roberts

The following was published on Substack by Western Watersheds Project

The facts of the case are not in serious dispute. In late February 2024, Daniel, Wyoming resident Cody Roberts chased down and struck a young male gray wolf with a snowmobile in Wyoming’s “predatory animal” zone, an area where wolves are legally classified as predators and are subject to essentially unregulated and unlimited killing. According to eyewitness accounts and state video evidence, Roberts did not immediately dispatch the animal after seriously injuring him. Instead, he restrained the wolf with a muzzle and collar, transported the gravely wounded animal while still alive, into the Green River Bar in Daniel, where he lay the animal on the floor for patrons to touch him and take photos, a spectacle that drew global outrage and condemnation. The wolf died as a result of the incident.

Images of the wolf on the barroom floor, accompanied by the gloating Roberts, ricocheted around the world, triggering outrage and condemnation. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department, led at the time by Director Brian Nesvik (since appointed by President Trump to direct the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), responded by fining Roberts just $250 for illegal possession of a warm-blooded wild animal and issued statements claiming that animal cruelty laws do not apply to predators like wolves under current state law. However, Nesvik later acknowledged that the warden could have required Roberts to appear in court, where he would have faced up to a $1,000 fine and six months in jail under the misdemeanor statute — penalties that were not initially pursued.

Livestock industry: We have to be able to run over wolves with vehicles

Within days of the incident going global, the Wyoming Legislature convened a “Treatment of Predators Working Group” to consider whether the state’s predator laws needed reform. One of the most influential voices at the table was Jim Magagna, the longtime executive vice president and mouthpiece of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, the livestock lobbying group that has shaped Wyoming’s predator policy for decades. Magagna warned lawmakers against restricting the use of snowmobiles to kill predators, arguing that running down wolves, coyotes, and other animals with machines is an essential tool for livestock producers. “I’ve talked with a number of livestock producers across the state — in particular, sheep producers — who have said that they view it as one of their most effective tools,” he told WyoFile.

Pausing here to let that sink in.

The direction of the legislators followed Magagna’s direction. Rather than questioning whether using vehicles as weapons against wildlife should be banned, lawmakers focused on how narrowly any new law could be written without inconveniencing the livestock industry. Early draft language would have explicitly affirmed that it is legal to run over wolves and other predators in Wyoming, provided the wounded animal is immediately dispatched. That provision triggered public backlash and was later removed, but the practice itself remained legal.

The only reform that ultimately passed in 2024 stiffened penalties for keeping injured predators alive before killing them, and even then, only on the second offense. Lawmakers did not ban chasing animals with snow machines, did not prohibit striking them with vehicles, and served as a tacit endorsement of recreational “predator whacking.” In the end, Wyoming’s response made clear that even the public torture of a young male wolf was not enough to overcome the political power of the public land livestock industry.

The justice system finally springs into action

A year later though, a Sublette County prosecutor braved the inevitable social blowback and determined that it was necessary to bring charges, and in August 2025, a grand jury indicted Roberts on felony animal cruelty charges. He pleaded “not guilty” in November. His defense is not that the events did not happen, but that Wyoming law authorized them.

According to various news outlets, in his court filing on December 30, Prosecuting Attorney Melinkovich dismantled that claim point by point. He argues that accepting Roberts attorney’s logic would mean Wyoming law grants a “blanket and complete license” to commit any act prohibited under the animal cruelty chapter so long as the animal is labeled a predator, pest, or wildlife.

“To draw such a conclusion is an absurdity,” Melinkovich wrote.

He also points out what Piper’s motion conveniently ignores. The predator statute allows animals to be taken “in any manner not otherwise prohibited by law.” (Emphasis added.) Other Wyoming law does, in fact, prohibit specific forms of cruelty and abuse, including willful and malicious infliction of pain or suffering when there is a reasonable remedy for relief.

In plain language, Melinkovich’s argument is simple: killing a wolf is not the same thing as tormenting one.

The state’s response also walks through Wyoming’s statutory framework as a whole, citing multiple sections that define “animal,” prohibit cruelty, and limit how wildlife may be treated even when killing is otherwise lawful. Read together, Melinkovich argues, the statutes are not ambiguous at all.

Melinkovich further rejects Roberts’ request for leniency under the rule of lenity, which instructs courts to resolve ambiguities in criminal statutes in favor of defendants. That rule, he notes, carries far less weight when the alleged conduct is “inherently immoral.” “Felony animal cruelty is inherently immoral,” Melinkovich wrote. And it is very difficult indeed to argue that Roberts’ actions in hauling an injured wolf into a bar for his own amusement – and those of other locals – is anything other than immoral. People from around Wyoming, and around the globe, have already convicted him in the court of public opinion.

The January 28 hearing will not determine guilt or innocence, but it will decide whether this case is allowed to proceed to trial at all.

If Judge Richard Lavery grants Roberts’ motion, Wyoming will have effectively created a legal black hole in which cruelty to predators is not just tolerated but immunized from legal consequences. Under that logic, severely injuring a wolf, duct-taping his mouth shut, dragging him into a bar, and letting him languish on the floor would not be torture; it would merely be a lawful form of hunting.

If Lavery denies the motion, the case will go to trial on March 9, where a jury will be asked to decide whether what happened to this wolf crossed the line from legal killing into criminal cruelty. A unanimous verdict will be required to convict.

For now, January 28 is the inflection point. At issue is not just whether Cody Roberts can be tried for what he did, but whether Wyoming law recognizes any moral or legal boundary at all when the victim is a wolf.

Roberts faces up to two years in prison if convicted, and under the law is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.

It’s time to bring an end to animal cruelty in Wyoming in the following ways:

• Amend the current law to criminalize all motorized killing of all Wyoming wildlife.
• Amend the Wyoming cruelty statutes. Confirm that all wildlife are included in the list of protected animals and that the behaviors exhibited in the Daniel, WY case, such as capture of an injured animal, torture, and torment of wildlife, are prohibited. This includes trapping and snaring.