As a defense attorney who’s built a career on advancing justice for the accused and incarcerated, Meredith Esser is skeptical of grand juries. That’s the approach Sublette County prosecutors are taking to pursue an indictment of Cody Roberts for felony animal cruelty. Roberts paraded a wolf around for laughs after allegedly striking it with a snowmobile in 2024.
The skepticism is partly because Esser — and many of her defense attorney peers — are locked out of the process. A legal defense isn’t part of a grand jury in the federal court system, or in Wyoming, where they’re seldom used.
“Essentially, grand juries have this veneer of impartiality because they are a jury of your peers,” said Esser, the outgoing director of the Defender Aid Clinic at the University of Wyoming College of Law. “But in reality, the prosecution gets to essentially just present whatever case they want. And it’s totally secretive.”
Although there’s a saying in legal circles that “a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich,” some Wyoming attorneys defend it as a valuable tool.
But for Esser: “Grand juries, I think, are less impartial than going with a preliminary hearing.”
Typically, a preliminary hearing is the first step in filing a felony charge. There’s no official, public explanation for taking the less conventional approach of convening a grand jury in Sublette County instead.
Prosecutor Clayton Melinkovich could not say if a grand jury was convening and declined comment when reached over the phone in late July.
The Wyoming Criminal Code states that grand juries are to be kept confidential. All associated legal filings are sealed. Even the indictment stays sealed until a defendant is in custody or has provided bail. WyoFile was able to confirm the grand jury is underway — with a decision expected in August — via several sources familiar with the proceedings.
Several current and former Wyoming attorneys reached by WyoFile who are not involved in the case shared their views on the legal proceedings unfolding this month behind closed doors along the west slope of the Wind River Range.
“I think that it’s possible that the prosecutor just doesn’t want blowback personally for making a decision to charge,” Esser said. “I don’t know what the public opinion is in Sublette County, but it’s possible that they’re very against this.”
Former Wyoming Attorney General Pat Crank, who led the state office during Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s administration, agreed that many in the community may be against prosecuting Roberts. As a former Wyoming Game and Fish commissioner, he’s familiar with the longstanding sentiments around wolves in rural areas and small town dynamics.
“I’m sure there’s a lot of heat on [the prosecutor], probably the majority of which is to not charge this asshole for what he did,” Crank said. “If the grand jury does indict, then they’re the ones responsible. He can say, ‘Look, I followed this legal procedure authorized by statute, and they decided to charge.’”
Crank spoke of grand juries being a powerful prosecutorial tool. Specifically, they give attorneys investigative tools like subpoena power that can help “ferret out criminality,” he said. That’s especially helpful when witnesses have been reluctant to testify.
“None of those people in that bar who watched him do all that bullshit that he did to that poor wolf are going to rat off this asshole 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.”
There were many witnesses to Roberts’ treatment of the wolf on Feb. 29, 2024. The incident blew up, becoming international news, after photos and videos surfaced showing that the resident of the tiny town of Daniel had flaunted the lethargic, injured animal in front of friends inside the Green River Bar.
A lack of legal repercussions fueled public outrage. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department responded to the incident by fining Roberts $250 for possessing the wolf. Investigating wardens could have issued steeper fines and required a court appearance but declined to do so. Sublette County law enforcement officials, who reported being kept in the dark about the incident, began investigating Roberts for possible felony charges — and they kept the probe open for more than a year.
Now the investigation has moved to the grand jury stage. One reason grand juries are confidential is to protect an individual’s identity when serious charges are being considered, but not assured. Esser, the outgoing UW law professor, said that the secretive nature of the proceedings is also intended to protect witnesses. But operating behind closed doors also has pitfalls.
“I personally believe what Cody Roberts did was wrong and immoral, but I also think that transparency in the criminal justice system is really important,” Esser said. “Grand juries deplete that transparency, especially in a case like this where whatever criminal statutes are being used are not used very often.”
Longtime attorney Bruce Moats, a recently retired First Amendment-specialist, agreed the public is largely boxed out of grand jury proceedings. Over his career, he only encountered grand juries on a couple of occasions and found it was very difficult to learn anything about them. Even after grand juries terminate, the eyewitness accounts and other proceedings customarily remain sealed.
“You can ask a court to release them, and there’s that potential,” Moats said. “But in my experience studying this, it doesn’t happen very often.”
There is one scenario where the felony animal cruelty investigation breaks back out into public view: If there’s an indictment.
To indict, at least nine of the 12 jurors must agree on bringing charges. The indictment would immediately become the charging document and could lead to a public trial.
WyoFile has made multiple attempts over the course of this case to reach Roberts without success.
Everyone associated with that situation are sick as hell. If you call that being a Wyomingite I’m embarrassed to be a citizen of the state. Nothing more than a town full of sick drunken adolescents.
‘Yote Whackin’ and Gay Bashin’ that’s what Wyoming DOES!
I agree that the wolf incident was stupid, tragic and un-necessary. I would like the public to become as indignant and judgmental when looking at child abuse, schoolyard shootings and criminal behaviors. I see no reason to publicize this wolf crime beyond others. Stop the publicity, please.
I am a retired NYS Police BCI Criminal Investigator. I was on the job for 26 years. I investigated many cases of animal cruelty, along with homicides and other crimes. The laws in Wyoming are similar to those in NYS when it comes to animal cruelty. There is no doubt that the torture Cody Roberts inflicted upon this creature is a felony. There is absolutely no justification to torture any animal. He should face the maximum penalty as allowed by law. I think the people of Wyoming are good, decent people and they wouldn’t consider animal torture to be a sound animal management practice.
I don’t agree with what Robert’s did, but this is a clear case of double jeopardy and county officials abusing their authority to appeal to the whims of a mob, most of whom aren’t even in or from Wyoming.
This is such an obvious, blatant attempt to cover up a gross injustice and not prosecute this criminal. In a society where regardless of sound science, and where stockgrowers and hunters are allowed to.make the rules and all predators are to loathed and should be killed, these closed door kangaroo courts should not be allowed. Open up the proceedings to the public and allow this character to eventually be punished by a court not populated by his peers, friends and family. Only then will this cruel and sadistic individual get a small taste of justice. He’s just a coward hiding behind the skirts of the system.
I’ve been a Wyoming hunter and fisherman for 71 years. My family are stock growers and have suffered at the hands of Wyomings’ large predators right there in Pinedale. That being said what was done and the way it was done to that wolf was wrong. If you’re gonna kill it then kill it. Shoot, shovel, and shut up! If your gonna cripple it and let it suffer ’cause your hate is strong keep that between you and the animal. It just plain boils down to ethics. Ya ethier got ’em or ya don’t and there was none on display in this case.
Very well said. This whole thing is the height of stuipidity. Why on earth anyone would pic a major agriculture area to plant wolves is beyond me. And when you add the fact it was a prime hunting area for people across the country, it was doubly stupid. When they knew that the wolves would take a lot of income away from the ranchers who had to feed them………brains and common sense seems to have been the first thing to go right at the first thought of it.