Two years ago, Wyoming resident Cody Roberts used his snowmobile to run down a juvenile wolf, which is legal under state law. However, Roberts didn't finish off the wolf and instead tied it up and brought it into a local bar, where he paraded it around, took pictures, finally got bored, and then killed it out back. The incident drew sharp international infamy, as pretty much everyone decried what Roberts did.
Wyoming's legislature has taken shots at narrowing the practice's guardrails numerous times, but each has failed due to heavy farm and agricultural lobbying. And clarifications through the Department of Natural Resources within the state haven't yielded the results many have wanted. However, Roberts' case was taken up by prosecutors who are now arguing that the snowmobiler violated animal cruelty laws, but it's been back and forth a couple of times now as each side has had to argue the merits of the felony charges.
Recently, Roberts' legal team argued that animal cruelty charges don't apply to predator populations, nor apply due to Congress moving to delist wolves, within the state. The judge, however, didn't see it that way and threw out Roberts' argument, allowing the case to proceed to trial. And the judge didn't mince words about Roberts' arguments.
"The plain language of [Wyoming cruelty laws] doesn’t provide a blanket license" to do whatever someone so pleases to a predator, but instead, "contains specific, enumerated exceptions," states District Court Judge Richard Lavery in his six-page statement. Those exemptions are for the "hunting, capture, killing or destruction” of predators, but the charges made against Roberts don't meet those statues, as that's not what Roberts did.
And while Roberts' lawyers argued that his actions should be qualified under the capture portion of the statute, stating it was just an extended period capture, Judge Lavery stated, "[T]his case does not arise out of the capture of the wolf, but out of Defendant’s alleged conduct after capturing the wolf but before it was killed."
Basically, he's telling Roberts that he had legs to stand on when he initially wounded the wolf and caught it, and that had he finished the animal off quickly, he could've gotten away scot-free. But because he paraded a wounded animal around in a bar for his drunk friends to take pictures with it, and then cried when he went viral for all the wrong reasons, he's subject to those animal cruelty laws.
After this latest hearing, Roberts is now set to go to trial on March 9th, though there are further hiccups possible. One of the biggest being Congress moving to delist wolves, though it's unclear how the animal cruelty charges, especially in Judge Lavery's view of the law, would change with that delisting or if at all.
