Public Defender Melody Anchietta looked around the Laramie County District Court for her client, but Aja Unique Johnson, who was scheduled to be sentenced for forging a check, was nowhere to be found on the afternoon of July 22. 

When Judge Robin Cooley asked whether 25-year-old Johnson was present, Anchietta replied her client was not in the courtroom.

The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Rocky Edmonds, suggested the judge issue a bench warrant for Johnson’s arrest. Anchietta didn’t object. 

The bench warrant, another blemish on Johnson’s already long list of legal issues, could complicate her chances of getting probation and placement in residential treatment instead of two to four years in prison, but Anchietta didn’t have an explanation for her client’s absence.

“Your Honor, I’m not surprised she’s not here,” Anchietta said. “I believe this is the third time she’s missed court, and I do not have any good contact information for her.”

What Anchietta didn’t know, until a probation officer whispered to the prosecutor, who then told the judge, was that Johnson didn’t make it to court because she was being held for a different fraud charge in the Platte County Detention Center an hour’s drive away.

Anchietta’s uncertainty about her client’s whereabouts concerned Johnson’s mom, Velma. 

“She wasn’t defending my daughter’s rights,” Velma said. “I wanted to ask her why she agreed to a bench warrant, instead of asking for a continuance … and I wanted to know if we needed to get a different lawyer to defend my daughter.”

Hiring a private attorney, with a lower caseload may have helped, but a different public defender likely would have faced the same challenges that made it hard for Anchietta to track Johnson across jurisdictions. 

Johnson’s case was one of 123 Anchietta said she was juggling while paid to work three-quarters time. She starts most days around 9 a.m. by visiting clients in the Laramie County Detention Center. By 10 a.m., she’s in court, where she spends the rest of the work day.

“It may take two, three days before I can return phone calls, because I can’t use my phone when I’m in court,” she said.

That doesn’t leave much time to make the calls necessary to track down clients like Johnson who rack up new charges outside Laramie County. Yet Johnson, who said she couldn’t afford a private attorney, was dependent on Anchietta, her court-appointed public defender, to advocate for a favorable outcome in court. 

That tension is at the heart of longstanding concern that inadequate justice-system funding complicates public defenders’ ability to provide adequate criminal defense, a right provided by the Constitution.

4,000 hours

The state created the Wyoming State Public Defender’s Office in 1978 to ensure that indigent clients facing criminal charges — those unable to pay for their own counsel — are still afforded their constitutional right to a competent defense.

The state of Wyoming funds the agency mostly through the general fund, but counties are expected to chip in, and clients are often asked to pay a fee when their cases are resolved.

The agency has a two-year budget of just over $25 million to accomplish this mission. Gov. Mark Gordon’s budget proposal asks for a little more than $31 million for the 2025-26 biennium.

Rep. Lloyd Larsen (R-Lander), chairman of the Mental Health & Vulnerable Adult Task Force, and a former member of the House Appropriations Committee, told WyoFile that he’s aware of the agency’s challenges, but doesn’t recall denying the agency any requested funding.

“Every agency will say they need more money,” he said. “If an agency needs more funding, they need to ask for it, and prove to us that their request is accurate.”

Not all of the agency’s struggles can be solved with money. In the office’s 2025-26 budget request, the agency said it’s in crisis due to “burgeoning caseloads.”

Anchietta said that 90 of her current 123 cases are felonies. The Rand Corporation estimates mid- to low-level felonies require an average of 45 hours each to resolve.

That means Anchietta would have to work 4,050 hours a year to close those 90 felony cases. For context, the average U.S. employee who works 40 hours a week will clock 1,920 hours in a year before overtime.

Anchietta, who started with the Wyoming State Public Defenders’s Office in 2012, said she works seven days a week. If the seemingly endless caseloads and long hours required to defend her clients weren’t enough, she’s recovering from a stroke she suffered on Jan. 24, 2021.

Initially unresponsive, she awoke in the hospital unable to eat or speak. Though she said she was making calls to cover her cases the next day, it would be eight months before she could return to the courtroom.

“I was right-handed before I had the stroke, but I taught myself how to write with my left hand before I returned to work,” Anchietta said. “I also taught myself how to touch-type with both hands before I came back. I know how busy the public defender’s office can be, so I have never used it as an excuse for special treatment.”

Anchietta added that she didn’t want her clients to know why she was out.

“Many clients will use any excuse to try to keep getting new lawyers,” she said.

She occasionally worries about how that impacts her ability to properly defend her clients.

“If I feel that I’m not doing a good job, I will ask my supervisor for some time,” she said.

Anchietta estimates that 95% of her clients are wrestling with substance abuse. While she said she pushes to get judges to consider treatment instead of jail time, her clients’ addictions aren’t always visible.

“My clients might have been arrested for domestic violence or theft,” she said, “but they weren’t in possession when they were arrested. And they haven’t admitted they have a problem. That makes it harder to see who needs treatment.”

‘I didn’t know how to help her’

Check forgery was the newest of more than 25 charges Johnson had accumulated since she began wrestling with addiction in 2017. 

Johnson said that drug use compelled her to do things she’s come to regret, and she was seeking rehabilitation options as she contended with separate charges in Laramie, Albany and Platte counties.

Her first run-ins with the law came in 2015, while attending South High School in Cheyenne. Johnson’s mom, Velma, said she became increasingly concerned as her daughter was getting into trouble for truancy more frequently.

“There was a while there,” said Velma, “I was getting calls from the police at the high school every day. They’d call and say they chased her but couldn’t catch her.”

Her daughter is smart, sensitive and caring, but she has a temper, Velma said.

“If she thinks you’ve done her wrong, she will let you know,” Velma said. “That makes it hard to push her around, but it also means she was getting into all kinds of trouble. And I didn’t know what to do to help her with that.”

Johnson began running with the wrong crowd around that time. She turned to drugs to cope with the effects of severe depression and anxiety. Though Johnson didn’t know it at the time, she said she was in the throes of what would later be diagnosed as bipolar disorder.

The combination of mental health challenges, and self-medicating with drugs, made it hard for Johnson to hold down a job. She didn’t have the money to hire a private attorney to address the mounting cascade of criminal charges.

Who’s looking?

Beyond high caseloads, public defenders often work with clients caught in a cycle of addiction and poverty, the one compounding the other. While one case works through the justice system, the client may rack up new charges in other jurisdictions.

Rep. Karlee Provenza (D-Laramie), House Minority Whip, said the problems plaguing the public defender’s office are systemic, stemming from underfunding and a conservative Legislature that still believes incarceration is a better deterrent to crime than rehabilitation, mental health care and education.

“I’ve heard plenty of stories similar to this one, where people have faced serious issues working with a public defender,” Provenza said. “That’s not the fault of the specific public defender, it’s our failure as a state to provide a defense for indigent accused people, and to protect them from government overreach.”

Short of more comprehensive reform, Wyoming could look to its neighbors for updates that would lighten public defenders’ loads, Provenza said.

“In Colorado, I can type someone’s name into a search, and I can find out whether they’re in prison or a county jail anywhere in the state,” Provenza said. “That’s not the case in Wyoming, where we’re failing according to the standards set forth by the Public Records Act.”

In Anchietta’s case, she can see who’s in the Laramie County Detention Center in Cheyenne, where her public defender’s office is located. But as Provenza described, Anchietta can’t easily follow clients who end up incarcerated elsewhere in the state.

“That lack of transparency is why our public defenders can fail their clients, and no one will know about it,” Provenza said. “And who’s looking?”

Provenza said that role has traditionally belonged to journalists, but with local news publishers closing at a clip of two per week, there are increasingly fewer journalists to keep tabs on the machinations of Wyoming’s criminal justice system.

“I’ve tried to pass criminal justice reform bills,” Provenza said. “Study after study shows that incarceration is more expensive than rehabilitation, support systems and education.

“Instead,” Provenza continued, “we’ve got an authoritarian Republican Legislature that still believes punitive measures are more effective, while also boasting that they’re fiscally conservative. But those two things don’t always align.”

‘A ticking time bomb’

Roughly 12,500-13,000 cases are assigned annually to the State Public Defender’s Office. The court decides which defendants are eligible for representation by a public defender based on the defendant’s ability to pay for a defense attorney regardless of caseloads.

In 2019, then-State Public Defender Diane Lozano announced her office couldn’t accept new misdemeanor cases in Campbell County, where the combination of endless caseloads, long hours and low pay led to a shortage of attorneys.

Circuit Court Judge Paul Phillips held Lozano in contempt of court for that decision.

“Every citizen has a constitutional right to a defense,” Phillips told WyoFile. “I understand that they were down four, five attorneys at the time. But when they said they were incapable of doing their job, we had to find other attorneys in Campbell County and beyond, and twist their arms to come in and do the work that public defenders could no longer do.”

Like many other states, including Colorado, Phillips said that the Wyoming public defender’s office is chronically short-staffed. That means public defenders have caseloads that are almost always threatening to be too much.

When State Public Defender Brandon T. Booth, who took the reins of the agency from Lozano in 2024, spoke with WyoFile in early November, he had 10 attorneys working out of his Cheyenne office. They need 13 to meet their current caseload. He expects to hire one more in January, which means they will still be two attorneys short of current caseload demands.

Booth said that attorneys would not exceed 100% of the maximum number of cases allowed, per the Constitution, but he added that many of his attorneys were very close to that number. When asked what the specific number is, he said there isn’t one.

“There’s no specific number, because we also take into account the complexity of each individual case,” Booth said. “So, the number of cases varies.

“It takes a certain kind of attorney to work with the public defender’s office,” Booth added. “The workload is not insignificant, and attorneys may make more money with a private firm. With us, they need to be passionate about our mission to push through burnout. We just keep coming to work, trying to keep our heads above water.”

There is no easy answer to the challenges faced by working as a Wyoming public defender, Booth said. The money will always be short, the caseloads, and the hours worked, long.

As the workload increases, attorneys in neighboring counties may help with those cases. If that’s not possible, the public defender’s office seeks attorneys from private firms to represent their clients for about $100 an hour.

Yet Booth said that private attorneys aren’t always versed in criminal defense, nor the dynamic nature of clients who are struggling with addiction.

Working for the Public Defender’s office challenges an attorney’s obligation to ensure that their clients are afforded their constitutional right to a defense, said a public defender who agreed to speak with WyoFile anonymously out of concern they might lose their job for speaking out.

“Wyoming uses caseload guidelines from the 1970s,” the attorney said.

Those include: 150 felonies, 400 misdemeanors, 200 mental health cases, 200 juvenile cases, and 25 appeals in a given year.

The attorney said that, with new technologies like bodycam footage, it takes much longer to comb through the discovery from all responding officers and agencies.

“I have an ethical obligation to my clients, as we all do, and myself,” the attorney added. “People’s lives are on the line. When the system fails them, they get thrown into jail instead of rehab. Their criminal records may bar them from working certain jobs, voting, financial aid for college. That’s what’s at stake every time we represent a defendant without the necessary support. The whole thing is a ticking timebomb.”

Slowing the revolving door

Anchietta successfully petitioned for Johnson’s release from the Laramie County Detention Center during a hearing on July 8. But within a week of her release, Johnson was arrested for violating a probation order, stemming from theft charges dating back to 2021, out of Platte County.

Sitting in the Platte County Detention Center, Johnson slipped off Anchietta’s radar ahead of the July 22 sentencing hearing that resulted in the bench warrant. 

That worried Johnson’s mom, Velma, who believed that without treatment her daughter would stay caught in the cycle of charges and incarceration. 

Getting people into treatment to address the substance use and mental health issues underlying criminal behavior is one way to prevent people from cycling through the court system, Judge Phillips said. 

“The whole idea is to stop the revolving door,” said Phillips. “You’ve got people who, but for substance abuse, but for mental illness, wouldn’t really be involved in the criminal justice system. Their addictions, and in some cases, their serious mental illnesses, lead to crimes which can land them in jail.” 

Once they’re in jail, the revolving door begins to spin. If the underlying problems aren’t addressed, many offenders — like Johnson — violate probation after they’re released. They re-offend, wind up back in jail, and the cycle continues — taxpayers pay hundreds of dollars per person for each day of incarceration and public defenders’ caseloads swell. 

To get Johnson out of that cycle, and into a facility before her slot was given to someone else, Anchietta needed to resolve her client’s case in Laramie County. There were the charges in Platte County to contend with too. 

Fortunately, the judge there agreed with a prosecutor’s recommendation that Johnson should go to a residential facility near Cody as part of a plea deal to forego incarceration for treatment.

In Laramie County, Johnson’s sentencing hearing was rescheduled for Nov. 25. She appeared via phone in District Court Judge Robin Cooley’s docket in Cheyenne.

Though no one in the courtroom could see Johnson, who was still being held in Platte County Detention Center, her voice came over the speaker system.

Johnson apologized for her actions and asked if she might participate in a rehabilitation program.

“Somewhere outside Laramie County,” Johnson said, drawing a low round of laughter from those attending the hearing.

Anchietta told Cooley that, given her client’s difficult childhood — many of her family members had suffered the impacts of addiction, they were involved in similar crimes, and, because of that, Johnson had been in foster care — treatment would be more effective than prison.

After some discussion with prosecutors, Cooley suspended the recommended two- to four-year prison sentence for three years of supervised probation.

Johnson’s conditions of release include participating in a residential treatment program, a comprehensive cognitive mental health evaluation, counseling, financial literacy courses, and abstaining from drugs and alcohol.

“With that, court’s in recess,” said Cooley. “All rise.”

Everyone in the courtroom could hear Johnson’s metal chair slide and skip across the concrete floor in the Platte County jail as she stood. Though she faces a long, hard road, with Anchietta’s help, Johnson’s on a path to recovery.

Anchietta said that she was happy with the outcome — even if it only lasts for a moment.

“I consider getting a client into treatment and out of prison a victory,” said Anchietta. “They at least have a chance to improve their life.”

Yet Anchietta keeps her head down and moves on to the next case.

“Even after a ‘not guilty’ verdict in a trial, which is the biggest victory a defense attorney can have, you still have to be back in court and deal with another client the next day,” she said. “Clients don’t care about your victories for other people, only themselves.”

This story was supported by a seed grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

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William Lopez remembers clearly the day in June 2017 when he says he was asked to call the spouse of a college friend who had just died and ask for her eyes.

The spouse hadn’t responded to calls from other employees at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, he said. As Lopez recalled, his supervisor thought a friend’s personal number would have more success.

Lopez refused. “I went for a walk,” he said.

Even without Lopez’s help, the eye bank that procures corneas from deceased donors in Wyoming and Colorado eventually collected his friend’s corneas, Lopez said. Lopez, who had entered the field to help people, became increasingly disillusioned during his three years working with the eye bank, despite rising from a technician to the distribution manager, and ultimately quit.

Checking the “donor” box on a driver’s license application, people may picture their heart, kidneys, or other organs saving another person’s life should the worst happen.

They are less likely to consider that tissues — corneas, tendons, bone marrow, skin, bone — are also covered by that checked box. In fact, donated tissues are collected much more frequently than organs, and corneas are the most commonly transplanted body part in the U.S., with nearly 51,000 transplants last year, according to the Eye Bank Association of America.

Organ and tissue donations are guided by different rules, with less transparency and what critics identify as more self-policing in the tissue donation industry. In Wyoming and Colorado, where the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank estimates it collects eye tissue from about 2,500 deceased donors a year, that has contributed to a tense work environment resulting in damaged or wasted tissues due to accidents, four former eye bank employees say.

“I think there’s an urgent need for stricter oversight of the donation process in general, particularly for eye and tissue banks,” said Janell Lewis, who worked at the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank for 12 years, managing public relations and overseeing fundraising before she quit in February 2023.

John Lohmeier, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, declined to be interviewed for this article. In a prepared statement, he said he couldn’t comment on personnel matters or specific incidents raised by the former employees.

But generally, he wrote, “there are internal procedures that have been in place and continue to be followed to investigate and/or report any incident that would impact health and safety concerns.”

Lewis, Lopez, and two other former eye bank employees recalled one or more of the following problems during their time at Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank:

• Removal of eye tissue from the wrong body.
• Damage or destruction of corneas due to improper removal.
• Removal of corneas from a donor with a high-risk family history that could endanger a transplant recipient.
• Lack of transparency about whether errors were being reported to federal agencies.
• Pressuring and bullying of technicians.
• High turnover and brief training of low-paid and inexperienced technicians.

The windshield of the eye

The cornea is considered the windshield of the eye. It is a clear dome that protects the eye from contaminants, maintains fluid balance and filters light. Recipients of cornea donations typically need transplants because of trauma, infection or other conditions that cause blindness or blurred or cloudy vision.

The Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank is one of about 60 eye banks operating in the U.S., which leads the world in corneal transplants. New technicians often arrive at the eye bank untrained, sometimes with only a high school diploma, to perform the grim job of removing corneas from recently deceased corpses for about the same wages many fast-food workers earn.

But what eye bank technicians may lack in education and training, they generally make up for with a strong belief in the mission, according to the former employees. They said they joined the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank because they wanted to help restore people’s sight.

The nonprofit employs about 70 people across Colorado and Wyoming, according to a tax filing submitted in 2023. Those records also show a net income of less than $1 million and more than $16 million in assets. Lohmeier was paid about $142,000.

Organs vs. tissue

Organ donations fall under the purview of the Health Resources and Services Administration, and public data details performance and financial transaction records of organ procurement groups. Tissue donation is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, as well as national industry groups, and tissue bank transactions, performance and outcomes are not available to the public.

There’s no reason tissues and organs should be treated differently, said Robert Dickson, medical director for the Washtenaw County Tuberculosis Clinic in Michigan. A patient in his county died from a bone graft contaminated with tuberculosis just a couple of years after a contaminated bone graft killed eight other patients.

He compared the tissue regulatory environment to the Wild West and called it a major public health concern.

“It’s fundamentally no different from an organ transplant. You’re taking tissue from one deceased patient and putting it into a living recipient. But it is not regulated and not tested as rigorously,” he said.

Marc Pearce, president and CEO of the American Association of Tissue Banks, said such cases are very rare.

“We don’t believe that we’ve proven ourselves to be not capable of regulating ourselves,” he said.

FDA officials disagree that the tissue industry is largely self-regulated, pointing to federal rules that require certain organizations to register with the agency and provide a list of human cells or tissues they recover, store or distribute.

The rules set donor eligibility requirements, and the agency inspects tissue establishments, including eye banks, said spokesperson Carly Pflaum.

“The FDA has implemented a tiered risk-based approach for the regulation of human cell, tissue and cellular and tissue-based products,” Pflaum wrote.

KFF Health News and WyoFile months ago requested reports of adverse events associated with the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank, but the FDA has yet to provide them. FDA dashboards show the eye bank has not issued a recall since 2017, and inspections since at least 2009 have not resulted in any official action.

The tissue industry is largely self-monitored and the performance of eye banks is tracked internally, whereas the federal government publishes annual performance reports for organ procurement groups. Health care providers are not required to report to the FDA adverse events resulting from tissue transplants.

Organ transplant providers are required to report safety events in recipients within 72 hours to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network, which operates under contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. That includes an organ going unused because it was delivered to the wrong location. They have 24 hours if, for example, the recipient gets an infection or disease that may have been from the new organ.

Other countries have public registries detailing the outcomes of corneal transplants, including Australia, the United Kingdom and Sweden. A similar registry in the U.S. could help monitor outcomes for patients and identify adverse events from transplant procedures, eye doctors and researchers wrote in the journal Ophthalmology Science.

Tissue bank industry groups are responsible for much of the oversight of their dues-paying members. Transplanting surgeons may report adverse reactions to the tissue bank, which generally then conducts a review and submits a report to the FDA and the Eye Bank Association of America or the American Association of Tissue Banks.

Nearly all eye banks in the U.S. are members of the Eye Bank Association of America, which inspects member banks at least every three years as part of its accreditation process, but such inspection reports aren’t publicly available. Safety is paramount, association president Kevin Corcoran said, and the association’s medical standards require eye banks to request patient outcome information from transplanting surgeons a few months after surgery.

“We want to make sure we don’t have an eye bank that is slipping in their performance or failing to recover tissue,” he said. He declined to comment on any individual eye bank’s performance or release quality or transplantation data, complaints filed or investigations undertaken.

No investigations have resulted in corrective action, he said, in the 13 years he has been at the association. The Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank is an accredited member of the association.

Balancing mission and stress

Several of the former employees were hesitant to speak about the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank because they didn’t want to sully the reputation of an industry they believe is essential for improving people’s lives and honoring the wishes of the dead.

But they described a high-pressure environment that they said led to many of their colleagues leaving and errors that reduced the number of successful retrievals.

Mackenzie Urban started recovering corneas as a technician for the eye bank in 2019 after finishing her bachelor’s degree. She saw it as a temporary job as she applied for medical school. But within a year of recovering her first cornea, she said, enough employees had left that she became the senior recovery technician and was training others.

She used limes for the training, guiding her students on how to use a scalpel to remove the peel without nicking the fruit beneath. Success meant lifting the peel off the lime without any juice spilling out.

“If you’re stressed, you’re going to shake,” Urban said.

Outside factors can compound the challenges of performing the delicate procedure. Maybe the coroner had drawn fluid from beneath the cornea, making collection much trickier, she said. After a person has been dead for about 24 hours, the eyes tend to deflate to the point of uselessness, adding time pressure to collecting donations, Urban said.

Sometimes, Urban said, another technician would be working on a body simultaneously, so that the entire body was moving around while she was trying to do the delicate procedure.

Interactions with grieving families could be intense, too. Sometimes, families would hug her, thankful that something good would come of their loss. Other times, they were hostile, such as the time one relative of a potential donor told her to “Cut your own f****** eyes out, you b****,” she recalled.

Urban appreciates the work the eye bank performs and doesn’t regret her time there. She said she respected that “they had a real commitment to serving the community and keeping prices low.” (It’s illegal to sell human body parts for transplant, but companies get reimbursed varying amounts for the expenses of harvesting, preparing and shipping tissues.)

But the workplace culture made it untenable for her, she said. For example, Urban said, she was reprimanded and told that she needed to “buck up or get out” because she declined to harvest corneas from a person who died from an unknown cause. The body was purple from the neck down, covered in oozing blisters and with opaque flecks in the eyes, Urban said.

When Irish eyes are smiling

The Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank has international contracts and ships corneas to Japan and the U.K., among other destinations. It became the exclusive eye tissue provider for Ireland when that country stopped collecting corneas over fears of transmitting mad cow disease. That means anyone who has received a cornea transplant in Ireland in the past two decades likely now sees thanks to a person who died in Colorado or Wyoming, according to the Irish Blood Transfusion Service.

Lohmeier, the eye bank CEO, said local needs are prioritized for donations, while international shipments help fulfill the eye bank’s mission and “ensure that all viable corneas are transplanted, giving the gift of restored sight.”

The U.S. is one of the few nations with a cornea surplus. FDA inspection reports confirmed that the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank procures more tissue than its geographic area can use.

The demand for international orders contributed to the high-pressure environment, Lopez said.

Employee turnover and the stress of the job resulted in the collection of corneas of poor quality, Lewis said. Local hospitals inquired about why so many corneas weren’t being transplanted, she added.

The leading reason was recovery errors that damaged the tissue, Lewis said.

Lohmeier disagreed that there was a significant decline in corneas being placed. “We do not believe this description accurately reflects the state of corneal recovery and transplants,” he said.

Internal records showed that about half of recovered corneas in November 2022 had moderate to heavy stress. The Eye Bank Association of America does not have comparable national data. The closest figure it tracks is the proportion, among tissues that were prepared but not transplanted, that were unable to be transplanted because of damage during processing; in 2022, it was a quarter.

Ashi Moore, who used to lead the Rocky Mountain Lions Eye Bank’s quality assurance department, said she once filed a report to the FDA after a donor’s eye tissues were removed despite a family history indicating a high risk of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The disease, which should have been disqualifying for donation purposes, is a fatal brain disorder that can be transmitted through infected tissue.

The issue was caught before the corneas could be placed in someone else’s eyes, but it should never have gotten to the point that the corneas were removed from the body, Moore said.

At least once, a technician retrieved corneas from the wrong body, according to Moore and other former employees (The FDA was unable to provide records to confirm that report by publication). Moore said she should have been told about the case of mistaken identity immediately but said she wasn’t made aware of it until after the eye bank’s leaders handled the situation themselves.

She said she couldn’t find evidence that the eye bank had reported the error to the FDA. It was one of the major reasons she decided to leave the organization, though she had derived a strong sense of purpose from working at the eye bank, she said.

When Lewis resigned, officials at the nonprofit eye bank offered her $5,000 to sign a severance agreement with a nondisparagement provision. She declined.

Lewis said she would like to see states hold tissue recovery agencies to the same standards as other organizations that handle corpses, such as hospitals, coroners and funeral homes. And if they fail to meet those standards, they need to be held accountable to build public trust, she said.

Lewis’ and Lopez’s negative experiences with the eye bank had another consequence. Each decided they no longer wanted to be an organ or tissue donor.

“After witnessing and experiencing so many issues, I no longer feel comfortable with the potential of my family having to go through that when the time comes,” Lewis said.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places, and policy.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

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They packed the pews tight at Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church, those without seats standing wherever they could find space. Mourners took off work and school, many traveling across Wyoming to gather on a calm, sunny October morning in Rock Springs. The service started late in order to make room for everyone. 

This was the funeral of Dawson Fantin, an 18-year-old graduate of Rock Springs High School who’d only recently left his hometown to start college at the University of Wyoming on a prestigious Trustees’ Scholar Award. One month into the semester, he died in his dorm room of an apparent suicide. The Sept. 28 death remains under investigation pending the results of an autopsy and toxicology screening. 

But there in the church, family and friends celebrated a young man who embraced people from all walks of life. He also had a competitive side, representing Wyoming in national high school speech and debate competitions. He volunteered at the local senior center and throughout the community. He lit up rooms with his goofy sense of humor. He was open about his own struggles with PTSD as part of his advocacy to destigmatize mental health care. His death shocked family and friends who saw nothing but his bright future ahead.

The University of Wyoming, in contrast to the outpouring of grief in Rock Springs, marked his death with nearly three weeks of silence. It wasn’t until Oct. 18 — 20 days after Dawson’s passing and 10 days after his funeral — that UW sent an email to the campus acknowledging a student had died. 

But that decision spurred suspicion about why UW had kept quiet. 

Effective communication 

Dawson’s parents, Debra and Paul Fantin, grew concerned about the delayed communications after hearing from Dawson’s friends that the burden of sharing the heartbreaking news with their professors was falling to them, and not the university. 

When asked why UW waited 20 days to notify staff and students of Dawson’s death, Vice President of Student Affairs Kim Chestnut told WyoFile the university was following outdated guidelines that advised against public notifications to prevent further suicides through contagion. Instead of an all-campus message, Chestnut said, a team had been working to reach out directly to impacted students and faculty. The university changed course, sending out the Oct. 18 email, when it came to light the guidelines had changed, Chestnut said.

“What I would offer is we have a new director of our counseling center,” Chestnut explained. “So Megan Belville [had] just begun in that position at the start of this academic year, and she researched last week what the practice recommendations are with the growth of social media and information sharing that is no longer within the means of a university to manage, which is why we decided to share information at the end of last week.” 

Moving forward, UW will more immediately notify the campus community about student deaths, and share bereavement and mental health resources, but not provide the cause of death in the case of a suicide, Chestnut said. 

While experts encourage a cautious, measured approach to communicating about suicide, WyoFile found that UW’s delayed acknowledgment of Dawson’s death was at odds with widely accepted national guidelines for suicide response, also called postvention, used by universities for more than a decade.

“It is important that the death be addressed openly and directly. After a suicide, once the basic facts are known, any attempt to delay informing students will only encourage rumors,” the Higher Education Mental Health Alliance’s guide to suicide response states. The resource, produced in partnership with nine organizations dedicated to advancing college mental health, was first released in 2014.  

“If communication efforts are not carried out in an effective manner the rest of the postvention execution will suffer and community anxiety will increase,” the guide advises. “Because of today’s immediate communication culture and the speed at which information spreads via social media, the postvention committee needs to be ready to communicate quickly to affected students and the campus community.” 

Dawson’s friends, extended family and parents told WyoFile that UW’s delayed communication added stress to an already heart-wrenching experience. They hope UW is genuine in its commitment to improving how it communicates about student deaths and mental health resources, but “only time will tell,” Dawson’s mom, Debra Fantin said. 

The message UW finally sent out on Oct. 18 stated: “Initial notice was not shared as we worked to manage family notifications and their wishes on information sharing.” While the wording indicated UW’s desire to be sensitive to Dawson’s family, it didn’t land that way with Debra and Paul, who were upset UW attributed the delay to the family’s wishes. 

“We had no communication with them at all,” Paul said. Debra said she received two voicemail messages from a dean and Paul has been in touch with UW police, but it’s been more phone tag than meaningful conversation, the two told WyoFile.  

Attached at the hip 

Katie Hinz remembers visiting UW last year and seeing crosses erected outside the student union in memory of three students who died in a car crash on Highway 287 last February. She’d love to do something like that for Dawson. 

“We met on Aug. 17, so the day after we moved in,” Hinz said. A group of first-year students sat in the grass waiting for an event to begin, and Dawson “sat on a sprinkler head and when he stood up his whole butt was wet,” Hinz said. She was struck by Dawson’s easygoing sense of humor. “He loved to entertain people, so he immediately made a joke out of it, and we just kind of became friends right from that moment. And then ever since then, we were attached at the hip.”

Being on campus without her sidekick has been tough, she said.

“What’s hard for me is I’m three hours away from where he’s buried,” Hinz said. “I can’t just go see him if I’ve had a bad day. And there’s no cross outside [his dorm], no memorial for him.”  

She’s thought about putting one up but she’s uncertain how the university might respond. 

“They’ve already been so hush-hush about a suicide in the dorm, like if I were to put a cross outside or anywhere on campus, would they just immediately take it down?” Hinz said. 

There’s good reason to approach physical memorials with caution to limit the risk of contagion, but the Higher Education Mental Health Alliance’s postvention guide also advises “a suicide death ought not to be handled differently than other deaths, but the framing of content needs to be carefully managed.”

Unfortunately, Hinz hasn’t felt like UW’s quiet approach is rooted in a desire to mitigate harm. 

“I feel like the university has tried to sweep this under the rug,” she said.

Not so, Chestnut said.

“That’s never a sentiment we’ve had or felt,” she said. “If anything, sweeping it under the rug would be in opposition to the very real space and time that we want to provide to attending to mental health concerns and prevention.”

Chestnut acknowledged how the delay in communication may have sent mixed messages and said the university commits to doing better. 

“We have provided great care,” Chestnut said. “I know that our teams have done incredible work to support students and faculty and staff at every measure. But are there elements that we can continue to refine and improve? Absolutely.” 

Because UW didn’t quickly notify all faculty, Hinz said “my professors were finding out about what happened through me, and I think that made them a little more confused and concerned.” Ultimately she found her professors were supportive, but at first, she worried some of them thought she was lying. 

Hinz said she doesn’t want to criticize UW because she understands administrators were managing a complex set of needs after Dawson died. But a campus-wide notification would have relieved her of the burden of explaining to professors and her fellow students why she was so upset. 

Shifting guidelines 

When asked for copies of the outdated resources that shaped UW’s decision not to release a timely public notification, as well as the new guidelines, Chestnut pointed WyoFile to a suicide response guide specifically geared to off-campus student housing managers released in June. 

Dawson lived in a UW dorm, not in independently managed off-campus housing. Regardless, those guidelines say community communications should be protective of those at a heightened risk of mental health issues and “sensitive to those grieving the loss of a community member, and offer hopeful messages about community support and healing.” 

When asked why she shared the off-site housing guide and if she could also share the previous guidelines, Chestnut said: “Please know, we reference a broad amount of resources to create our practice, there are national organizations that support nearly every aspect of student affairs so we won’t just be using the off-site document.” 

She also declined to share UW’s current guidelines because they are in the process of being edited. 

Swiss cheese 

Dawson’s cousin Kali Lenhart is a UW alum, but her poke pride is wavering. 

“We are a very close family, and Dawson was more like a sibling to my sister and me than he was a cousin,” Lenhart said. She started babysitting him a couple of times a week when she was a teenager and he was just months old. “My social life in high school, outside of sports and activities, was babysitting and hanging out with Dawson. We were very, very close.” 

Her grief is immeasurable, but beyond that “the piece that I’m struggling the most with is how the university has handled all of it,” Lenhart said. “I know they do a great deal of prevention, and they have lots of resources as far as the prevention side goes, but how they handled [Dawson’s death] or really their lack of handling is one of the pieces I’m having the hardest time with.” 

Lenhart and her sister Kelci Schutz have shared with administrators how UW’s slow communication put unnecessary stress on Dawson’s fellow students and friends like Hinz. In response, they’ve also heard promises that the approach will change. 

Staff turnover could factor into why the university dropped the ball, Lenhart suggested. There’s a new director of the counseling center and an interim dean of students. But Lenhart knows from her experience working in health care as a nurse and clinical supervisor that pointing the finger doesn’t lead to lasting change. She prefers the Swiss cheese approach. 

“You line up all these slices of Swiss cheese, and if the holes in the processes and systems you have in place line up just right, and something gets all the way to a patient to cause harm, then you ask: What’s wrong in the system? What do we need to build into the system?” 

Lenhart hopes that speaking up about her family’s experience will help UW to improve its procedures. 

“I have so much pride in this institution, and I don’t want to have to lose my love for UW on top of Dawson,” Lenhart said through tears. “And so for some reason, I want to make this better, and I want the answers.” 

“You have to fix this,” Lenhart said, speaking to her alma mater. “You can’t do it this way for other students.” 

The University of Wyoming’s website encourages “any concerned individual can refer a student who may be experiencing academic, personal or emotional challenges or who may be demonstrating concerning, distressed, or disruptive behavior to the UW CARES Team by submitting a referral form.”

Anywhere in the United States, if you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, call or text the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct where Dawson Fantin volunteered and his mental health diagnosis. —Ed.

The post A student died on campus, and the University of Wyoming stayed silent for 3 weeks appeared first on WyoFile .

The State Freedom Caucus Network, a national right-wing political organization that aims to establish hard-line majorities in every statehouse in the U.S., invoked founding father Samuel Adams to lead off an email newsletter: “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.” 

The quote is telling of the ethos of at least one network member — the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which has been particularly aggressive in the past few years, holding town halls, posting on social media, disseminating press releases, generating headlines, establishing its own political action committee and earning a reputation for bare-knuckled campaign tactics. 

Confrontational campaign mailers funded by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ political action committee, WY Freedom PAC, bent the truth far enough to elicit a defamation lawsuit. The postcards claimed traditionalist Republican primary opponents had voted to remove former President Donald Trump from the ballot when, in fact, there has never been such a vote. 

The caucus has similarly needled Gov. Mark Gordon. In October, for example, after Gordon gave a speech at Harvard University touting his carbon-negative energy plan, members of the caucus accused the governor of sharing a “drastic change in policy” with a “pro-Hamas, pro-China” audience, “but not his own neighbors.” Gordon had, in fact, readdressed the already years-old initiative with lawmakers months earlier during his 2023 State of the State speech. 

This approach has proven politically effective, and in short order. Once making up a small minority, the cadre of far-right Republican lawmakers who are either members of WFC or sympathetic to its cause now appear poised to install a majority in the Wyoming Legislature following the November general elections. “The State Legislature — that’s the prize,” Wyoming GOP Chairman Frank Eathorne, a Freedom Caucus ally, told a like-minded crowd at a political rally prior to the primaries. As the dust settled on Aug. 20, it became clear that the WFC was much closer to claiming that prize.

Lawmakers associated with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus have successfully put into law restrictions on crossover voting. They pushed through a sweeping abortion ban, though the ban is currently tied up in court, and led the effort to bar the University of Wyoming from spending state dollars on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. But many of the caucus’ legislative initiatives have stalled because of its minority status in the Legislature. That will likely change come the next legislative session. What the group will do with its newfound power and what mark it will leave on Wyoming politics and policy remain to be seen.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, nothing blue

Caucuses are nothing new to the Wyoming Legislature or American politics writ large. By joining forces, they allow lawmakers sharing a common interest to leverage their numbers in a unified voting bloc, giving them more power than they would have individually.

In the Wyoming Legislature, the Republican and Democratic parties have caucused longer than anyone can remember. Caucuses meet — more often than not behind closed doors — to plan strategy, disseminate marching orders, choose candidates or decide on policy matters. Legislative leadership is picked during party caucus meetings, typically in December after the general elections and before the legislative session. 

Given the Republicans’ supermajority status, however, the most consequential conflicts in the Wyoming Legislature arise not between the two major parties, but within the GOP itself. Before the formation of the WFC, such intra-party power struggles were typically organic, disorganized affairs characterized more by a broad-ranging collection of individual views and interests than by organized movements employing sophisticated tactics. They also used to take place mostly behind the scenes.

In recent years, clashes between traditional and hard-line Republicans have at times risen to a level that people compare to silver-screen melodrama. “This whole experience has been very high school-esque,” Cheyenne Republican Rep. Daniel Singh, a freshman lawmaker and WFC member, told WyoFile. “You could seriously make a movie akin to Mean Girls about the Legislature.” The WFC has thrived in the “high school-esque” halls of the Capitol. 

The movement dates to late 2015, when nine congressional Republicans formed the U.S. House Freedom Caucus to oppose the Obama administration. The group quickly drew attention for bucking the traditions of cooperation and compromise in which newer representatives defer to senior lawmakers. It has threatened to kill measures of its own party, pressuring Republican leadership to change bills and legislative rules to its liking. 

In January 2023 the U.S. House Freedom Caucus’ disdain for convention made international news as the bloc strung out the vote for speaker of the House, requiring 15-ballots to elect Kevin McCarthy. Through the process, the caucus, which was the primary stumbling block to McCarthy’s ascent, squeezed all sorts of concessions out of the California Republican, such as changes to House rules that empower the caucus and promises of seats on panels and committees that determine committee assignments and set the floor agenda. The group was also responsible for McCarthy’s subsequent ouster in October 2023. 

Some have described the Freedom Caucus as an outgrowth of the conservative populist Tea Party movement that gained momentum during the Obama administration. Many of the ideologies and constituencies certainly overlap, but others argue that the Tea Party movement was more diffuse and lacked specific drivers, whereas the Freedom Caucus originated from concentrations of political power in Washington. “What we see with the Freedom Caucus is driven by lawmakers, not voters,” said Matthew Green, a political science professor at the Catholic University of America who has studied the U.S. House Freedom Caucus and its state-level offshoots. “I would argue the Tea Party is really a grassroots movement whereas Freedom Caucuses are more lawmaker driven.” 

Tea Party sympathizers in the Wyoming Legislature were also loosely organized, Gerald Gay, a former lawmaker who served during the height of the movement, told WyoFile. “The Freedom Caucus, I would say, has more of an agenda.” 

Following the 2016 presidential election, some Wyoming Republicans began employing methods similar to their congressional counterparts, creating a loose group that steadily grew its ranks. 

In its early days, this group numbered about six lawmakers. In September 2020, it became more formalized at a meeting in Story when sympathetic legislators came together under the banner of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus to better negotiate with House leadership, which they often described as unacceptably liberal and labeled as RINOs — Republicans in name only. “We found that a number of us were in agreement on most of the budget issues that were before the Legislature, and we found also that we weren’t getting anywhere,” Tim Hallinan, a former Republican state representative from Gillette and an original member of this group, told WyoFile. “So we decided to get together and form this Freedom Caucus. We had the example that the House Republicans had in Washington, so that was kind of our model.” By that time, the group reliably commanded between 18-20 votes in the House. 

The group met for potluck dinners, primarily at churches, throughout the 2021 legislative session. These gatherings were open to non-members. Even former Rep. Marshall Burt, at the time the Legislature’s lone libertarian, was invited, though he told WyoFile that members eventually gave him “the silent treatment” and stopped inviting him after he failed to vote with the group on a number of social issues. 

The new caucus didn’t initially draw much attention. It was still very much a fledgling group, and the session was conducted largely online in 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawmakers had plenty of other issues to worry about. But observers and members of the caucus say the pandemic helped solidify the group’s identity. It gave the group high-profile issues like mask and vaccine mandates to criticize and organize around. The pandemic also centered fears of government overreach in the public discourse, making the Freedom Caucus’ anti-big-government messaging more relevant.  

“COVID gave them a platform,” Casper Republican Rep. Tom Walters told WyoFile. “Without it, I don’t know that they would have gained the steam that they did.” (Walters lost his race in August to Wyoming Freedom Caucus-endorsed political newcomer Jayme Lien.) 

It also opened wider the doors of the Legislature to the public — a change that some believe boosted the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ cause by allowing people to more easily observe what goes on in the body. Before the pandemic, legislative meetings were rarely streamed, and people couldn’t give public comment online. “I think that COVID brought something that was very interesting. That was transparency,” Wheatland Republican Rep. Jeremy Haroldson, former vice chair of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, told WyoFile.

National resources, training and tactics

The WFC gained 10 legislative seats in the 2022 election. By a single vote, it also managed to install one of its allies, Hulett Republican Rep. Chip Neiman as the House majority floor leader. With these gains, the caucus reached a certain critical mass. It had 26 reliable votes in the House (the number of official caucus members, which remains secret, is at least half that) — enough to block bills from introduction during budget sessions. 

The bloc wielded that newfound power to dramatic effect right out of the gate in the 2024 legislative session — the first budget session of the 67th Legislature — by promptly killing 13 committee-sponsored bills. As the products of months of off-season work and investment that typically reflect leaderships’ top priorities, committee bills are traditionally handled with care in the session. 

Many saw the procedural maneuver as both a thrown gauntlet and a foretaste of future tactics. It came roughly a year after the WFC announced its partnership with the State Freedom Caucus Network. 

Though lawmakers frequently interact with national organizations on a more informal, ad hoc basis, this was the first time that a group of Wyoming elected officials officially joined forces with a national organization that would help direct and support its overall strategy. 

The network formed in late 2021 under the auspices of the Conservative Partnership Institute, a juggernaut of the national hardline movement that has helped launch several right-wing groups in recent years. Trump’s one-time White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, a senior partner at CPI, helped found the caucus network, and is one of the organization’s directors. Meadows was also a founding member of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus. The Conservative Partnership Institute and the State Freedom Caucus Network share headquarters at 300 Independence Avenue in Washington, D.C.

Gillette Republican Rep. John Bear, until recently WFC’s chairman, first met and started talking about a partnership with the caucus network’s president, Andrew Roth, in 2021 at the organization’s launch in Atlanta, Georgia. Roth previously worked for the Club for Growth and the Club for Growth Foundation — conservative economic advocacy organizations.

A year-long courtship followed. In December 2022, Bear and several other Wyoming lawmakers traveled to Washington and visited the network’s headquarters for a two-day intensive training. They learned about branding, reading and writing legislation, using procedural tactics to push their policy priorities and interacting with journalists. They practiced making videos of themselves for social media in the organization’s basement recording studio. The caucus’ role as an underdog fighting against the establishment was emphasized in the program. 

“In training, we try to show them this unlevel situation that they’re in, and we try to provide them with support,” Roth told WyoFile. “We just want to do what we can to help level the playing field so that they can more effectively fight.” 

The founding members of Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus voted to enter a partnership with the network during this trip. They also attended a Christmas party at the network’s headquarters, where state Freedom Caucus legislators from across the country and U.S. House Freedom Caucus luminaries like U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio mingled. 

“Washington was kind of eye-opening in the fact that it’s refreshing to have a group that says, ‘We don’t want to run your state. We don’t want to tell you how to do anything, we simply want to give you the tools that you want,’” Haroldson, who initially had reservations about partnering with the organization, told WyoFile. 

Not everyone aligned with the Freedom Caucus agreed with the decision. Sheridan Republican Rep. Mark Jennings, one of the original ringleaders of Wyoming’s Freedom Caucus, told WyoFile that he chose not to become an official WFC member following the partnership because of the national network’s involvement. “There are perspectives that might come from people in D.C. who might have different perspectives than people in Wyoming,” he said. (Though he was invited, Jennings opted not to visit the network headquarters with other Wyoming lawmakers in 2022.) 

Others shared his skepticism. Green River Rep. and WFC member Scott Heiner, who traveled to D.C. that December, recalled spending hours researching Roth and his organization prior to the trip. “They seemed to have the same kind of core values as I did,” he told WyoFile. “But still, this is Washington, D.C., so I was very dubious about the whole thing.” 

He was particularly concerned about the network’s financial backing. “I wanted to follow the money,” Heiner said. He and other Wyoming lawmakers requested to see a list of donors, which Roth provided. Heiner described these donors to WyoFile as “freedom-fighting organizations” that came from “all across the country.” (He declined to share the list with WyoFile, as did Roth.)  “I can just say that our donors are just ideologically driven,” Roth told WyoFile. “They’re the same sorts of people that give to the House Freedom Caucus in D.C. They believe in our mission and they share our values.” 

As part of the partnership, the national network pays the salary of Wyoming State Director for the State Freedom Caucus Network Jessie Rubino. As an undergraduate at the University of Wyoming, Rubino founded the school’s chapter of Turning Point U.S.A., a national pro-Trump youth organization. She later attended law school at UW, graduating in 2021. For a time afterward, she worked as a high school history teacher in Casper. She is married to Joe Rubino, Secretary of State Chuck Gray’s chief policy officer and the nephew of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman. 

“Typically, when we want to work with lawmakers to help them set up a Freedom Caucus, we’ll talk to them and see who they recommend,” Roth told WyoFile. “I believe that was the situation here. We met with Jessie. We agreed that she was principled and competent and frankly overqualified, and so we hired her.” 

Rubino researches bills and provides vote recommendations for members of the WFC and its allies — sometimes in real time, via text, as votes are being held in the Legislature. During the off-season, she monitors what  executive agencies and departments, local governments and interim legislative committees are up to. “For decades, Wyoming bureaucrats have been radicalized by complacency, entertaining the idea of allowing men into the women’s prison in Lusk, funding lewd and alcohol-fueled drag shows and worse, because nobody was watching them,” she wrote in an email to WyoFile: “Now, we are watching.” (Rubino declined to share how much the network pays her to do this work, as did Roth.)  

Tapping team Trump 

The national organization has also given Wyoming Freedom Caucus members greater access to high-profile, and sometimes powerful national figures. 

Throughout the fall of 2023, the network organized a series of Zoom calls between state Freedom Caucus members and presidential candidates Vivek Ramaswamy, Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. Heiner, the Green River Republican, recalled Ramaswamy taking the call in an airport. The Wyoming lawmaker asked Ramaswamy if he would pardon Trump if he became the Republican nominee. Ramaswamy said he would.

“That [level of access] brings a lot of value to us,” Heiner told WyoFile. “I mean, we’re just a small group of legislators from little Wyoming and we get to have a one-on-one conversation with presidential candidates. That’s huge.” 

The WFC supported Trump, who eventually became the Republican nominee for president. There were, however, reservations. “A sizable part of the Freedom Caucus thought that Trump had become part of the swamp,” Singh, the Cheyenne Republican, told WyoFile. (At the end of the interview, Singh leaned toward the recorder and added: “For the record, I don’t think Trump has become part of the swamp.”) 

“The first thing I’d say is that we’re not electing Jesus,” Bear, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman, told WyoFile. 

“Nobody’s going to be perfect. Republicans and conservatives for the first time really said, ‘You know what, we’re not going to hold our leader to the same standard or some higher standard than our opponents do their leaders.’ It has frustrated the left because they attack Trump in ways that the Evangelicals and conservatives typically would abandon a candidate, and it hasn’t worked because we’re beyond that. We feel like our country’s at such a position where we got to get something done, or it’s going to be lost. We’re not looking for somebody perfect. We’re just looking for somebody that’s willing to turn it around. And Trump, Trump has something that very few people have, and that’s a desire to fight.” 

The WFC isn’t waging that fight alone, but rather as one strand in a broader web of self-described conservative organizations with national ties operating in Wyoming. Moms for Liberty, a national organization that fights what members describe as the “woke indoctrination” of school kids, has several chapters in Wyoming. Members of these groups have pushed to remove certain books from school libraries and won seats on local school boards. At a 2023 Wyoming Freedom Caucus town hall in Casper, Dan Sabrosky, a member of the Natrona County GOP, pointed to Mary Schmidt and Jennifer Hopkins, two Natrona County School Board trustees who had been Moms for Liberty members before being elected, and said: “That’s our Freedom Caucus on the school board.” 

In April, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus endorsed students Gabe Saint and J.W.  Rzeszut for the presidency and vice presidency of the Associated Students of the University of Wyoming — the school’s student government. Saint is president of the school’s Turning Point chapter. The two students ultimately lost their races.

“I don’t know what level you call student government. Local, I guess. But it’s another thing that distinguishes the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. They’re being very active in a lot of different spheres,” said Green, the academic who has studied the group.  

A new brand of politics

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus gained at least three seats in the Aug. 20 primary, boding well for its desire to control the House — an outcome which will be determined by November’s general election. 

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Roth, the national network’s president, told WyoFile regarding the election results. “We had similar results in every single one of our states across the country.” 

The national network wasn’t involved in any of the caucus’ campaigns before the primaries, according to Roth: “We reserve the right to get involved, but right now, we are not,” he told WyoFile in July. “We typically don’t. All of the state Freedom Caucuses that we work with have their own PAC, and they are in charge of their own political efforts.” 

Shortly after the primaries, however, Roth told WyoFile that the network gave the Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ political action committee $20,000. “It’s just when the money was available,” he said.

Before the primaries, the WY Freedom PAC spent about $152,000 with Nevada-based media consultant McShane LLC, whose motto is “Take it by the Horns,” largely on consulting, digital advertising and mailers. Bear, then WFC Chairman, took to Facebook following the primary to thank McShane for bringing “data and their trademark aggressive tactics” to Wyoming, but rejected the characterization of the PAC’s campaigning as negative. 

“Voting records being shared with the voters is not negative campaigning, it’s just sharing the facts,” Bear told WyoFile. Some of those voting record descriptions, however, were factually inaccurate.

McShane has operated in Wyoming before. In 2022, WFC ally and then Rep. Chuck Gray paid McShane nearly $200,000 in his successful bid for secretary of state. That campaign also turned heads for its use of “blatantly false” claims in text messages. 

The WFC was not without organized opposition in the primaries. In 2023, traditional Wyoming conservatives in the House created the Wyoming Caucus to counterbalance their hard-line colleagues. 

“The Wyoming Caucus was just created on its own, out of its own grassroots energy there in the House as we were faced with obstructionist tactics by people associating themselves to the Freedom Caucus,” Rep. Clark Stith, a Rock Springs Republican and the chairman of the Wyoming Caucus, told WyoFile. The traditionalist Republican group isn’t currently partnered with any national or state organizations, nor does it have bylaws or a membership list, Stith said. 

The creation of a parallel caucus to oppose the Freedom Caucus is unique to Wyoming, Green, the political scientist, told WyoFile. “What you see other leaders do is nothing, they just ignore them, they end up either co-opting or being co-opted by the caucus, if it’s big enough, or they do things like punish individual members.” 

The Wyoming Caucus spent about $45,000 to hire the campaign consultants En Pointe Strategies of Colorado and PR 213 LLC of Wyoming to support candidates in the primary elections. 

“I’m really bullish on how we’re going to do on Aug. 20,” Stith told WyoFile before the primaries. “I’m thinking we’re going to come out with better numbers than we had this last session. I expect us to pick up a few seats.” 

That, of course, was not ultimately the case. Stith himself will no longer be in the Legislature come the session in January — he was defeated in the primaries by Darin McCann, a physician assistant who was endorsed by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus.

Outsiders on the inside

If the Wyoming Freedom Caucus gains a majority, it will have the power to elect legislative leadership. “I think ultimately, we desperately need to see a shift to the point where leadership can be taken,” Haroldson, the former Wyoming Freedom Caucus vice chairman, said. “If the Freedom Caucus has the leadership seat, then at that point, you get to change the narrative or control the narrative in a way.” 

Bear told WyoFile in June that it’s a “foregone conclusion” that Neiman, the House majority floor leader, will run for speaker of the House. Beyond this, Bear said he hadn’t personally thought through who should run for any particular leadership role. “We have to fill a lot of leadership positions if we take the majority, and so we’ll have to determine who fits best.” 

Bear, whom the State Freedom Caucus Network recently bestowed with its best state lawmaker award at the organization’s annual event in Dallas, is no longer the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman. Following the primaries, the caucus elected Cody Republican Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams to be its new chairman. Rodriguez-Williams had previously been the group’s secretary and communications director. Gillette Republican Rep. Christopher Knapp was elected vice chair and Douglas Republican Rep. Tomi Strock is the new secretary.

The WFC has ambitions beyond the Legislature. Next election cycle, the group aims to gain seats in the executive branch, particularly the governor’s. The governor has veto power that can only be overwritten by a two-thirds majority vote. This power has frequently been an obstacle for the caucus’ policy priorities, including earlier this year when Gordon vetoed several bills the group had prioritized, including a ban on gun-free zones in Wyoming and additional abortion restrictions. 

There are already about half a dozen names floating around for potential gubernatorial candidates aligned with the WFC. Bear pointed to Neiman, Lingle Republican Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, Ranchester Republican Sen. Bo Biteman, Secretary of State Gray and State Treasurer Curt Meier as possible contestants for the 2026 race.

This could be a problem for those Republicans looking to prevent a moderate from taking office. Bear told WyoFile that, if it were up to him, he would conduct a statewide poll to see which candidate constituents most supported, then have the caucus back that candidate. But even backing one candidate won’t necessarily prevent others from jumping into the race anyway. 

“Unless I can convince all those people that are interested in running for governor that the conservative movement is more important than their political career, it’ll be problematic, and it’ll probably hand it to the left,” Bear said. “The Freedom Caucus is more aligned with the cause than with an individual, I can tell you that. Chuck [Gray] was one of the very founding members long before I was part of the Freedom Caucus. He was there and he’s proven himself to be about the conservative movement. Is he electable? I don’t know. I think that Chip Neiman has a great deal of gravitas that people are drawn to. People want to follow him, myself included. I mentioned Cheri Steinmetz’s ability to build coalitions. So those are just a few examples of what I think makes it difficult to decide who it should be. So I don’t want to be the one to even try.” 

Counterintuitively, the groups’ gains may contain a threat to its future. If it does take a majority in the Legislature and install Freedom Caucus-aligned leadership, then, of course, it will lose its position as the outside critic and be obligated to bear the burden of leadership. The words of Samuel Adams would no longer apply to the group: It wouldn’t be the insurgency — the “irate, tireless minority” — but the new establishment. 

“That is one of the big questions that Freedom Caucuses face, as any caucus does: Once you’ve established yourself and you flex your muscles, do you try to pursue the more traditional avenues of influence?” Green said. Sometimes, he explained, insurgencies prefer to stay outside of the leadership structure if they believe there is something to be gained electorally by saying they aren’t part of the establishment. 

“That’s a potentially valuable brand that could be watered down if you become a part of the leadership structure in a legislature.”

The post The takeover: How Wyoming’s ‘tireless minority’ took control appeared first on WyoFile .

Julie Jarvis stood staring at the floor with typewritten notes in her hand. She wore a black, white and gray turtleneck sweater and black pants. Her jaw was squared, her hair straight and silver. She seemed to be somewhere else — not in the room in the house in Casper with the abstract paintings, the baby grand piano and the people sitting before her with expectation in their eyes. It was an evening in late February, and a winter wind had risen, the kind that leaves highways littered with overturned freight trucks. Outside the window, cottonwood trees danced maniacally. A mad roar whipped through the streets. 

Inside it was quiet. Susan Stubson, a member-at-large of the Natrona County Republican Party, put her foot on the piano bench, clasped her hands and began to speak. “I’m just really honored to be part of this movement, for sure,” she said. Stubson described Jarvis as a person with “grit” and “discipline,” a “hard worker” and an “analytical thinker.” 

“This is going to be a hard fight,” she said. “I’m not really into tribalism, but I think in this case we need to circle around our wagons.”

This fight concerned House District 57, a state legislative district in Casper that encompasses a cemetery, several churches, the Casper Recreation Center and 2,434 registered voters of the blue-collar oil town. It had historically swapped hands between Democrats and Republicans. More recently, competition had turned inward between conservatives. A Democrat has not held the district’s seat this century. 

But the struggle extended beyond House District 57. A central question hung over many legislative races this election cycle: whether the hard-line Republicans associated with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus would secure a majority in the Legislature, a feat that would potentially impact swaths of policy decisions on topics from climate change to the types of classes offered at the University of Wyoming. 

The group has a reputation for caustic rhetoric, aggressive campaigns and for sometimes eschewing traditional Republican values, like local control and personal liberty, when those tenets conflict with the bloc’s goals. Members of the caucus often use the term RINO — Republican in name only — to describe fellow party members with whom they disagree. Their growing influence has culminated in a crucial turning point for Wyoming conservatives. A Republican state lawmaker once described this juncture as a “a battle for the spirit of Wyoming, and specifically, the conservatism of Wyoming and what that means.” 

Jarvis was an unlikely part of this struggle. She grew up on a small farm outside of Buffalo. She was raised Catholic and attended church every Sunday. She played competitive sports and shot her first animal when she was 4. She went off to college in Connecticut, where she eventually earned a doctorate in educational leadership and administration. Now, she is the Natrona County School District’s director of teaching and learning. 

Politics was not central to her life. Before her sat several of Natrona County’s long-time Republican politicos, many of whom she was meeting in person for the first time. There was Kim Walker, the Natrona County GOP’s state committeewoman. There was Joe McGinley, a local doctor and Natrona County GOP state committeeman who’s had several spats with allies of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. There was Pat Sweeney, a former lawmaker who was ousted by Wyoming Freedom Caucus member Bill Allemand in 2022. There was Dale Bohren, the former publisher of the Casper Star-Tribune and a Natrona County GOP member-at-large whose wife Susan had served in the Wyoming Senate. There was Stubson, who has given interviews on the state of Wyoming politics to outlets like the L.A. Times and MSNBC and is the spouse of former Wyoming lawmaker Tim Stubson. (Susan Stubson joined WyoFile’s board in August.) 

Jarvis was an anomaly in this group. Politics was among her least favorite things. She knew little about the Wyoming Legislature or the state of the Wyoming GOP. But now she had the attention of these people, who were waiting for her to speak. So she did, her voice trembling.  

“I’m a fourth-generation Basque Wyomingite,” she said. 

“I’m a want-to-fix-it kind of person,” she said. 

“I’m a mom. I love being a mom,” she said. 

“I truly plan to retire here, so I want to see Wyoming thrive,” she said. And if she wanted to see Wyoming thrive, she would have to do what she had not imagined she would do. Because she had observed the current lawmaker for House District 57, Republican Jeanette Ward, at school board meetings, and had grown increasingly convinced over time that Ward didn’t represent the values of the district, where Jarvis also lived. 

Ward came to Wyoming in search of freedom. In August 2021, with her husband and two teenage daughters, she left her home in Illinois, which over the years had become increasingly blue, and settled in Casper. She has described herself as “a political refugee” — a label that some on the right had co-opted in recent years as they fled liberal states for conservative ones. Back in Illinois, Ward’s political trajectory was well-documented by the Chicago Tribune. She had served on the U-46 School Board, headquartered in Elgin, Kane County. She gained a reputation as a controversial board member for statements she made opposing the district’s transgender student policy and for her response to a class assignment one of her daughter’s received that made religious statements she disagreed with. “Some people said I was a little bit of a lightning rod,” the Chicago Tribune reported Ward saying after she lost her reelection bid to the U-46 School Board after a single term: “You either loved me or hated me.” 

Soon after, she ran for the state Senate. Her Democratic opponent won by a close margin. 

Ward moved to Wyoming shortly thereafter. Upon her arrival in Casper, she began attending Natrona County School Board meetings, where she and other parents spoke against the district’s COVID-19 vaccine policies. Then the parents, including members of the right-wing group Moms for Liberty, began targeting school library books that they considered to be “pornographic” or otherwise inappropriate for school-aged children. Those on the other side of the matter questioned Ward’s true motives — much of the literature at issue featured characters who were LGBTQ or from racial minorities. Ward took part in protests against the Wellspring Health Access Center, a new health facility in Casper that offers abortion services. She encouraged a boycott of local businesses and organizations — including the hospice and humane society — that had sponsored the city’s widely attended annual Pride event. 

When the 2022 election season arrived, Secretary of State Chuck Gray, who was then the representative of House District 57, asked Ward to run for the seat after deciding to enter the race for secretary of state. Another Republican, Natrona County School Board member Thomas Myler, filed his candidacy last-minute to challenge her. Ward soundly defeated him in the primary and beat her Democratic opponent in the general election. She joined the Wyoming Freedom Caucus after her first session at the Capitol. 

In short order, Ward, who declined to speak with WyoFile for this story, became for Wyoming an archetype of the far right-wing elements that had profoundly changed the state’s and the nation’s politics since the COVID-19 pandemic — a villain or a hero, depending on one’s perspective. Former Wyoming Freedom Caucus Chairman John Bear once praised her as the “Joan of Arc of the Wyoming Legislature.” Some described her as the state’s resident Marjorie Taylor Greene. 

And as a result of Ward’s rise, Jarvis found herself one fall afternoon last year at Johnny J’s Diner sitting across a table from Bohren, the Natrona County GOP member-at-large. For a year he had been searching for a candidate to run against Ward. He didn’t know Jarvis but liked her and felt she had the right motivations for running. Bohren told her that if she did do it, he would stand by her until the end. And there he was standing by her that February evening as they practiced a mock campaign launch for Jarvis, a Republican candidate for House District 57.

Now the gathered people were telling Jarvis their ideas for a campaign strategy. “You don’t want to play dirty, but you want to be aggressive,” McGinley told her. He suggested sending mailers that say “No out-of-state influences,” or some similar message. 

They should comb through Ward’s voting record, he added. Sweeney cut in and listed some bills to look at, and Bohren said that he had already started a spreadsheet with legislation and Ward’s votes. 

Walker brought up door knocking. “She and her daughters hit almost every single door!” she said of Ward. “That’s gonna be huge, the door-knocking.” 

McGinley told Jarvis that he thought it would be great to get her kids involved. Jarvis, anxiously, said she would rather not. “I’m really trying to keep my family out of this,” she said. “That’s my weakness.” 

They discussed endorsements: possibly support from Americans for Prosperity? From the family of the late Tom Lockhart? “He’s a revered former legislator,” Stubson noted. “Who Chuck tried to dismantle,” Sweeney added, referring to Secretary of State Gray. 

They talked about advertisements: Social media should be prioritized first, broadcast probably second. 

They talked about budgeting: The race could run upwards of $20,000, $30,000, $40,000. 

Outside the window, the cottonwood trees lashed in the wind. Debris skittered through the air. As the group devolved into post-rehearsal small talk, Jarvis stood with her arms crossed. She put a smile on her face. “Isn’t she perfect?” Bohren remarked to another volunteer out of Jarvis’ earshot. 

But Jarvis was not feeling perfect. She felt a growing dread at the realization that the rules of the game had already begun to bend her. The speech she had written for the rehearsal had included elements that did not tell the entire truth of what she believed in, because she had been told that they were necessary to position herself as a strong conservative. And as the words had left her mouth she felt this dread at having compromised herself.

Wyoming’s soul aside, there was also the matter of her own, and whether it would survive the corrosiveness of politics, particularly when the aggression of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus demanded an equivalent response. She’d had numerous conversations about this with her partner, Kody Hendricks. He was afraid that she would be made to do and say things that she didn’t want to do or say for the sake of political expediency. She was afraid of this, too. 

Before going to bed that evening, she prayed to God, as she did every day. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” she thought, “and if I’m supposed to, you better help me.” She went to sleep that night feeling sick to her stomach.

In the morning she had an idea: She could survey the voters of House District 57 about where they stood on a variety of issues, and if she was elected, she would use the results to determine how to vote on bills in the Legislature. Once she thought of this, she determined to run only if she could run in this way. She called Bohren in the car that morning. “I thought it was completely nuts,” he later said about her new plan. The amount of work that would be involved seemed insurmountable. But he wasn’t surprised. Bohren had come to know Jarvis as a person with strong convictions.

She launched her campaign over email on April 22. The email linked to a video of Jarvis that she had posted on her campaign website: “If you’re from Wyoming, you know we value the right to make our own decisions for our families, health, pocketbooks, businesses, safety and local communities,” Jarvis said with the awkward recitation of a novice. “We’re not fans of people trying to come in and change us or take our individual rights away.”

“I believe the best solutions come when everyone’s voice is heard,” she continued. “But right now, Wyoming is a political circus that has forgotten how decisions impact local people.” 

***

Wyoming has become a political circus in a different way for people aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. “We know that we have uniparty candidates that are out to destroy our way of life,” Frank Eathorne, the Wyoming GOP chairman and an ally of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, said one July afternoon before a room of like-minded Republicans from around the state. He wore a cowboy hat and a polo emblazoned with the American flag. 

“They are infringing and encroaching on our freedoms. They’re spending our money like there’s no tomorrow. They’re not protecting our rights. And that’s got to stop this cycle.”

It was the Sunday after Independence Day, and the campaign season had just begun. The crowd had come together at the Tate Pumphouse in Casper for a political rally. The day was clear and hot, and the pumphouse doors were open, letting in the low roar of the nearby North Platte River. An American flag was pinned over a window in a corner of the room, blocking the blinding reflection of sunlight on the river’s surface. 

Ward was there, watching Eathorne as he spoke. 

“The state Legislature — that’s the prize,” he told the crowd. “That’s the prize we’re eyeing. We can get there.” 

This prize wasn’t control of the Legislature by Republicans, who already held a super-majority in both chambers. It was control of the Legislature by a certain kind of Republican who had once been relegated to the fringes of the body by traditional, chamber-of-commerce conservatives but were now poised to take over. One of those Republicans is Ward, who stepped up to the lectern after Eathorne. She is small, but muscular — she regularly attends the local CrossFit gym with her daughters. 

“Last election cycle, I promised voters that I was pro-Life, pro-freedom, pro-Second Amendment and pro-family, and that’s exactly how I voted,” she began. Her voice was steady and sure. 

As a lawmaker, Ward sponsored bills to bar small businesses from requiring employees to wear masks or get vaccinated, to broaden the definition of child pornography, to prohibit health mandates from the Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization from being enforced in Wyoming, to require the governor to get permission from the Legislature before declaring another public health emergency and to define women by their chromosomes and reproductive systems, among others. None of her measures made it into law. 

“If we want to change how this land is governed, we need to change the butts in the seats, including the governor,” Ward told the audience. 

“I’m very grateful and proud to be running with all the conservatives represented here today. Please give it your all for them.” The audience clapped and cheered. “Reelect me and I will continue to be pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-Second Amendment and pro-family. Thank you.” 

The crowd gave Ward a standing ovation. She relinquished the floor to Mike Eathorne, the Wyoming GOP chairman’s brother, who was emceeing the event. “You can see why they nicknamed her ‘the Firebrand,’” he commented: 

“Man. Lookout. Here she comes.” 

***

A few days later, “the Firebrand” came down Second Street, one of Casper’s main thoroughfares, marching in the Central Wyoming Fair parade beside two other Natrona County Republican lawmakers — Tony Locke and Allemand. Each of them carried an American flag. 

Bear, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman at the time, had once described his vision for the caucus being “a military unit that’s ready to fight and stand in the gap for the people of Wyoming.” The lawmakers in the parade leaned into the metaphor. Behind them followed a camouflage military-style truck, a great gurgling beast covered in the campaign signs of local Wyoming Freedom Caucus members and their allies. Ward’s blue and green sign, with the GOP elephant poised for attack, crowned the front grill. Downtown, a man in a black tank top stepped into the street to high-five Ward and Locke. He shook Allemand’s hand. 

In election years, the Central Wyoming Fair parade becomes a procession of campaign ads. There was longtime Republican lawmaker Tom Walters of House District 38, who was running against Jayme Lien, a Wyoming Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidate. There was Chris Dresang, another Natrona County School District administrator challenging Locke in House District 35. There was Elissa Campbell, running against Pete Fox and Pamela Mertens in House District 56, where the current representative, Republican Jerry Obermueller, is retiring. 

And a few floats in front of Ward there was Jarvis in jeans and sneakers driving a side-by-side ATV that pulled a trailer carrying high school and college kids in red “Vote for Julie Jarvis” shirts. Among them were Jarvis’ two children, Danica and Kadon Boyce. The kids had descended on the trailer with decorations they had bought on Amazon and at Walmart — strings of paper horse silhouettes, red, white and blue ribbons, shining cellophane streamers, inflatable stick horses. They wore red, white and blue mardi gras beads. They were armed with neon water guns. The float blared Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA.” As it proceeded through the streets of Casper, the kids got into increasingly raucous water fights with the crowd, first using their water guns, then red plastic buckets filled with water, which they overturned on the heads of laughing children. 

The scene grasped at something that had been eroded recently in Wyoming: politics as a small-town affair in this state that many describe affectionately as one town with very long streets. Even in Wyoming, the country’s least populous state, this neighborly atmosphere was becoming difficult to preserve as issues like abortion, LGBTQ rights and election integrity have created rifts in the country’s politics. 

In Wyoming, legislative campaigns had become more aggressive and often centered on personal attacks over social media and in mailers. People poured more money into races than they had before. Jarvis was no exception. She had a team of volunteers who helped her with social media messaging, campaign signs and door knocking. And there were other people separate from her campaign who had an interest in her success.

***

One of those people was Amy Womack, who walked a quiet street in House District 57 one hot and stifling afternoon in late July. Despite the heat, she wore blue jeans and a black vest. From the pocket of her jeans dangled a silver and purple rhinestone keychain that said “GIRL POWER.” The Wyoming state flag was stitched to the back of her vest. The front was emblazoned with the logo of Americans for Prosperity, the behemoth libertarian conservative political advocacy organization for which Womack served as one of the Wyoming chapter’s grassroots engagement directors. 

Womack passed a pristine lawn where, hoisted on a pole, an American flag and a Trump 2024 banner wafted languidly in the air. She rang the doorbell on a door that went unanswered. “Thanks for stopping by!” the doorbell said in an excited female voice. “If you’d like to leave a message, you can do it now!” She walked up the driveway of a house with a purple tree in whose shade stood a woman, observing Womack’s approach. The woman wore shorts and a black tank top that said “Been doing cowboy s**t all day.” 

“Oh hi!” Womack said when she noticed her. “My name’s Amy Womack, and I’m with Americans for Prosperity. We’re out reminding folks ahead of the primary election to get out and vote.” Womack handed her a pamphlet with Jarvis’ photo on it. 

Jarvis had known little about Americans for Prosperity before the organization endorsed her. Americans for Prosperity is headquartered in Virginia. It was founded by David Koch, a lifelong libertarian and one of the Koch brothers behind the multinational conglomerate Koch Industries. The Wyoming chapter can’t give money directly to candidates, nor can it coordinate with them, and consequently it doesn’t have to disclose the names of its donors. 

The endorsement process took months. Jarvis filled out a survey. She spoke with Tyler Lindholm, the director for the Americans for Prosperity Wyoming chapter and a former Wyoming lawmaker, over the phone. Lindholm and his team scoured the internet for anything they could find about Jarvis. Then they looked at whether the involvement of Americans for Prosperity could make a difference in the race. Lindholm said that most of the lawmakers who vote with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus had also filled out the survey. The organization endorsed some of them. On the topic of caucuses, Lindholm once remarked: “I hate all caucuses, and I’ve got friends in both, and they know exactly where I stand — that I hate them both, and I hope that their caucuses die and wither on the vine.” 

There were other groups independently canvassing on behalf of legislative candidates this year. In late June, Stubson was out door knocking with Jarvis when she saw a young man whom she mistook for a Jarvis supporter, because of his red shirt. The young man was canvassing too. He smiled at Stubson and said he believed he was campaigning for Jarvis’ opponent. 

He was a canvasser for Make Liberty Win, a Virginia-based federal political action committee that disseminated mailers, text messages and phone calls in support of legislative candidates, most of whom are members of, or aligned with, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. Some of the political action committee’s literature mislabeled new candidates as incumbents, misstated the early voting dates and, in one case, used the wrong image for a candidate. Make Liberty Win spent $371,260.68 on Wyoming races, which included $9,683.16 to support Ward in the House District 57 race. “I’m grateful for their support,” Ward had said. “They seem to have gotten some things mixed up, but I’m not responsible for that.” 

The woman Womack met in the House District 57 neighborhood was sympathetic to Jarvis. “Oh good, I like her,” she said, taking the pamphlet from Womack and looking at it. “I told her I’d put a yard sign out. I know just everywhere I go, I see: ‘Jeanette Ward, Jeanette Ward, Jeanette Ward!’ And the mailers are Jeanette Ward and this and that.” 

Earlier in the week, the woman had received a mailer in support of Ward. “DON’T BE DECEIVED!” the mailer said. “Dr. Julie Jarvis is a RADICAL LIBERAL running as a Republican. We can’t afford to let her make educational decisions for our children in Cheyenne.” A photo of Jarvis, washed over in a foreboding red, was printed behind the text. The back of the mailer said Jarvis had emailed the school board to request the readmittance of several books by the author Ellen Hopkins into the district’s libraries. The controversial books were among those some parents had wanted to remove. Jarvis had been appointed head of the district’s seven-person reconsideration committee for some of the books in question. She had read all the materials that Ward and the other Moms for Liberty members had sought to ban. The conflict over these school library books was resolved last year when the district adopted a new opt-in and opt-out permission system. 

“I am deeply disappointed by the false and misleading information being spread by the WY Freedom PAC regarding my work as the district’s reconsideration committee chair,” Jarvis responded in a mailer. “The truth is that although I may not have agreed with the final decision to keep the book, I did then firmly agree with the decision to place the book on the Opt-In list, meaning students must be 18+ years old or have signed permission from their parents to check the book out.” 

The mailer explained that library books use a review system that suggests age groups for materials based on interest rather than appropriateness. “Because of difference, schools have become prime battlegrounds for differing opinions when a book’s appropriateness is in question,” Jarvis’ mailer said. “Therefore, the best solution is to allow each parent the right to choose what is best for their child.” 

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus’ political action committee, WY Freedom, had paid for the mailer attacking Jarvis. The caucus has been a point of anxiety for many in the state’s political circles not only for its political tactics and ideologies, but also for its association with the State Freedom Caucus Network, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that aims to create Freedom Caucuses in all 50 states. In July, Jarvis wrote a letter to the voters in her district addressing this partnership: “While Ward and I agree ideologically on several conservative issues, we don’t agree on who we are representing,” the letter read. “Ward talks a very conservative game, but she isn’t the kind of conservative Wyoming needs. Her lack of transparency and independence is a concern, as she votes according to national agendas rather than what’s best for Wyoming.” 

“If you vote for Ward, you are really voting for Jessie Rubino, an employee of the national organization called the State Freedom Caucus Network,” Jarvis’ letter continued. Rubino is the Wyoming state director for the State Freedom Caucus Network and the spouse of U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman’s nephew Joe Rubino, who is Secretary of State Gray’s chief policy officer. Her salary is paid by the D.C. organization. She researches every bill that crosses lawmakers’ desks and provides vote recommendations for members of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus and their allies, often via text as votes happen on the floor. During the off-season, she monitors what  executive agencies and departments, local governments and interim legislative committees are up to. 

On another day that was less hot and stifling, Womack walked a different but equally quiet street. A Jeanette Ward sign hid behind barrels of dead plants at the first house she visited. A Make Liberty Win pamphlet for Jeanette Ward hung from the door at the second. An unanswered doorbell echoed inside the third. Next to the entrance hung a mailbox decorated with a faded sticker that said “God Bless America.” The mailbox was open, and inside was a Julie Jarvis mailer. “Don’t believe the out of state mudslingers and their blatant lies about Julie Jarvis,” it read. 

The Jarvis campaign had printed the mailer in response to one from Ward. “JARVIS is a CHENEY Republican … endorsed by an ANTI-TRUMP organization and backed by a GOVERNMENT union!” Ward’s mailer said. It referred to Womack’s previous role as the political director for former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, whom hardline Republicans in Wyoming had disowned for her criticisms of Trump. Americans for Prosperity spent millions this year to oppose the former president. The mailer claimed that Jarvis was backed by the Wyoming Education Association. She didn’t seek the union’s support, but the association campaigned aggressively this year against Ward and other candidates associated with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. “Don’t be fooled by another Redcoat RINO hiding who they really are and who is unwilling to debate!” the mailer concluded. 

An older woman answered the door of one house. “Hi!” Womack said. “We’re just reminding folks to get out and vote on Aug. 20th.” 

“Oh we’ll be there,” the woman said.  

“Good, good!” Womack held out a door hanger. “Have you decided who you’re supporting?” 

“I have,” the woman replied, looking at the pamphlet, “and it’s not Julie Jarvis.” 

“It’s not Julie?” 

“Sorry.” 

“Oh, OK. So you’re pretty much set?” 

The woman’s small dog barked incessantly, jumping frantically against the chain link fence. 

“Well, the only reason is because I know she voted for the books, the kids’ books in the school library, and I totally disagree with that,” the woman told Womack. “Bad bad things. You can’t run as a conservative and vote for something like that.” 

“So you want to limit free speech?” Womack asked her. 

The woman paused. “I want to limit books that go to our children and show them parts of each other. That’s not free speech. That is teaching our children it’s OK to do things that God didn’t intend for them to do. So sorry.” 

“OK, well, do you want to keep this?” Womack held out the door hanger again. 

“No,” the woman said, and laughed. “I appreciate it.” 

***

It is conversations such as these that show the identity crisis of Republicans in Wyoming and across the country. “How many of you realize the word ‘conservative’ has been hijacked?” Eathorne, the Wyoming GOP chairman, had once asked. Those who are not aligned with the Wyoming Freedom Caucus often ask this same question, and the lack of an answer that all Republicans can agree on has fractured the party.

 “I am really concerned with what’s happening in Wyoming with the divisiveness,” an older woman said at a political forum one evening in late July. 

Liberty’s Place 4 U WY and Natrona County Republican Women were hosting the legislative candidate forum in the theater room at the Ramkota Hotel in Casper. Several candidates had declined to participate, including Jarvis. “Thank you for the offer, but my goal/focus is to find out what the local people want — trying to do more listening than talking right now,” she texted the organizer. In 2022, traditional conservatives had been flayed alive at the debate hosted by Liberty’s Place 4 U. The crowd had heckled Sweeney, the former lawmaker of House District 58, for wearing a mask. Sweeney had been on immunosuppressants. “Pat, you sicken me,” Allemand, who ultimately primaried Sweeney, had declared. This evening, Sweeney sat in the back row, watching the candidates speak. 

“We have to work,” Allemand said in his introduction. “We have to work to get Jeanette reelected, to get Jayme elected, to get Kevin elected, and Tony and Pete. This is our goal. We can not lay on our laurels any longer.” 

Fox, the House District 56 candidate, was the only person he named who was not endorsed by the Wyoming Freedom Caucus. He did not mention Jarvis, or Walters, or Campbell, or his House District 58 challenger Tom Jones, none of whom were endorsed by the group. 

“We have a disaster growing in Wyoming,” Allemand continued. “We have to elect these very good, conservative people so that we can carry on something that started just a very few short years ago. We have now a Freedom Caucus, a Freedom Caucus that is working for you. We are doing everything that we can to bring you freedom, to bring you liberty, and we cannot stop that.” 

It was at this point that the woman walked to a microphone near the front of the room. She noted that Allemand had skipped certain candidates when encouraging the crowd to vote. “It felt like an intentional overlook,” she said. “So I just want to say I noticed.” 

Allemand stood to address the woman. “All I’m saying is please, elect conservatives,” he said. “I am not going to endorse a Republican or a Democrat, I’m going to only endorse conservatives. If that person is not a conservative, I did leave them out. If that person is a conservative, I brought them into the fold.” 

The woman said she was puzzled, because Republicans are supposed to make up the conservative party. 

“I say I follow the state Republican bylaws 100%,” Allemand responded, “and if you don’t, maybe you ought to look at being a Democrat.” A smattering of applause and some groans of protest followed this proclamation. 

The woman started and hesitated, turning over Allemand’s words. They encapsulated the central anxiety and disagreement that has cleaved the Wyoming GOP in recent years — the question of what constitutes a genuine Republican, and who gets to decide. “I’m disappointed,” the woman finally said, “that you’ve challenged me as a Republican.” 

“Say that again?” 

“I’m disappointed,” she repeated, raising her voice, “that you’ve challenged me as a Republican by remarking that maybe I should be a Democrat.” 

“Listen,” Allemand said, trying to find words as the woman continued to speak. “Let’s have another question,” Mike Eathorne, the state party chairman’s brother, interjected. “Ma’am,” Allemand said, “ma’am, I do appreciate that, and I don’t care what you are, I love you,” — someone in the crowd gave a sardonic chuckle — “whether you’re Democrat or Republican, I respect your views in all things.”

After a moment, the woman responded. “I’ve learned much from you, thank you,” she said quietly. 

“Say that again?” 

“I’ve learned much from you, thank you.” 

“And you don’t like anything you’ve learned.” Allemand laughed. 

“I’ve learned a lot, thank you,” the woman said again, with finality.  

There wasn’t much else to say. “I want to talk to you afterwards,” Allemand concluded, then sat down. 

***

Ward and Jarvis met for the first time a few days later, at the Politics in the Park forum in Casper’s Washington Park. The event was hosted by the Republican Women of Natrona County at a bandshell in the middle of the park’s greenery on the last day of July. The two candidates greeted each other, then sat side-by-side onstage in folding chairs with their campaign signs propped before them. They didn’t exchange any further words.

A food truck was parked by the bandshell. The crowd of about 30 people, mostly seniors, gathered on the shaded lawn in their camping chairs. Dozens of campaign signs were pierced into the greenery. The American and Wyoming flags framed the stage. The candidates, including two from another local House race, looked small and vulnerable onstage. 

They had two minutes to introduce themselves. Ward went first. She gave the same speech she had given at other forums: “Last election cycle, I promised voters that I was pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-Second Amendment and pro-family. And that’s exactly how I voted. I stood up for the voiceless.” 

Jarvis went next. She smiled nervously as she stood and held the microphone. “I have found that when you set a goal and allow for people around you to create and define how to get there, amazing things happen,” she said. “Therefore, my political platform is designed to do just that. It is centered around giving the voice back to the local people.” 

Just before the debate, Jarvis had published the results of her survey on her campaign website. By that time she had received 238 responses. Some of the results had surprised her, and some conflicted with her own beliefs. “If the people of House District 57 say that they want a specific way that I have to vote, I have to do it,” she later said, “and it’s gonna kill me inside.” 

Then they fielded questions from the moderators:

The public good or service that they most appreciate?

“Freedom,” Ward said. 

“Education,” Jarvis said. 

Their position on tax policy?

“Taxation is theft,” Ward said. 

“The people of House District 57 said property taxes are too high,” Jarvis said, “but they did say that they like a balanced government that provides services in the areas that we value.”  

The most pressing issue in the state currently?

“Property taxes,” “medical freedom” and “men in women’s bathrooms,” Ward said. 

“Protecting Wyoming,” Jarvis said. “We have a lot of federal government and national organizations coming into our state trying to tell us what to do and how to live our lives and what services we should have. It’s concerning, because for those of us who grew up here, work here and plan on retiring here, we want to make sure that Wyoming continues to become the great state that it has been and is, and that we also take care of our people.”

***

On the evening of Aug. 20, primary election day, members of the Natrona County Republican Party waited at Wyoming’s Rib & Chop House, a restaurant in downtown Casper, to see which of these visions for the state would prevail. Small groups sat at tables near the tall windows, which let in a hot, overcast daylight. The clinking of dinnerware wafted through the air. The calm summer evening belied the day’s importance.

On the banister of the restaurant’s upstairs seating area hung a sign advertising the Natrona County GOP’s election night party. Walker, the Natrona County GOP state committeewoman, arrived early to set up for the gathering. She wore a red blouse, white shorts, black heels and a red, white and blue rhinestone GOP elephant pendant that she worried over with her fingers. Walker had spent the last days before the Aug. 20 primary door knocking for Jarvis and other candidates. She had talked to well over 3,000 people while canvassing for Jarvis over the summer. She had spent seven to nine hours a day doing this in the last three weeks before the primaries. “When I start, I don’t stop,” she said. As a consequence, her right heel had developed a large blister. 

Walker was confident Jarvis had it. Her candidate committee had raised more than $42,000, and most of the donations had come from individuals. Ward’s candidate committee by comparison had raised about $19,000. Walker felt this indicated people’s enthusiasm for Jarvis. But her work for the primary election was over, and the outcome was out of her hands. She poured herself a generous glass of white wine. Now, she only had to wait.

The party was a small affair: a few decorated tables, a buffet, some balloons. At the front of the room, a webpage with election results was projected onto a large screen. 

The polls closed at 7 p.m. By that time, more people had arrived, and the tables were crowded with paper plates piled with food, beer bottles and glasses of wine. Jarvis arrived around a quarter to eight with her son, Kadon, and her partner, Hendricks. 

It was the first week back to school for faculty, and she had spent the day giving professional development presentations at work. She was relieved that the primary campaign was over. The constituents in House District 57 had lately been telling her that they were tired of the canvassers and the barrage of campaign mailers that had disturbed their peace for the summer months. Jarvis, hungry from the long day, filled a plate and poured herself a glass of red wine. She sat at a table with Hendricks and her son and they waited. 

Everyone waited. The first results to come in were for Wyoming’s congressional races — the Republican incumbents, Hageman and Sen. John Barrasso, won handily. 

The other results took longer. People trickled out, leaving a small, tired group of stalwarts and their subdued chatter. A bit after 9 p.m. someone refreshed the webpage, and suddenly there were results. The room grew silent and attentive. People stood and leaned forward. 

Hendricks turned to Jarvis, who was eating a chip. 

“You got it,” he said quietly.  

“Oh,” she responded. 

Jarvis coughed once, then slowly got up from her chair and faced the screen. She embraced her son, then embraced Hendricks. 

“Julie Jarvis!” Walker cried. The room erupted in claps and cheers. Jarvis smiled a dazed smile. Her son and Hendricks each had an arm around her. “Good deal,” she said. Soon, she was receiving congratulatory texts and phone calls, one of them from Ward.

“I’m grateful to the Lord Jesus for the last two years I have been able to serve Him and the people of Wyoming in House District 57 in the Wyoming legislature,” Ward posted on Facebook shortly after their call. “Unfortunately, I did not win reelection tonight. I called Julie Jarvis to congratulate her and I pray she will serve the people and do what is righteous. Duty is ours; results are God’s. I will see what He has for me next.” 

But the jubilation inside the restaurant subsided as it became apparent that Jarvis’ triumph over a Freedom Caucus incumbent was the exception, not the norm. Walters, who had served in the Legislature since 2013, had lost his race to Lien. Dresang had failed to take over Locke’s seat. Jones had also come up short. And though the Wyoming Freedom Caucus had suffered some damage, on balance, it had made gains in the primary. The caucus maintained most of its seats and secured three additional ones. It could gain nine more seats in the general election — given Republicans’ dominance in Wyoming, it has the inside track in most of those races — and is poised, for the first time, to control the Wyoming Legislature. 

Across the state, Freedom Caucus-endorsed candidates had ousted prominent traditionalist Republican lawmakers. Pinedale Republican and Speaker of the House Albert Sommers lost a senate race to Kemmerer’s Laura Pearson. Speaker Pro Tem Clark Stith, of Rock Springs, was ousted by Darin McCann, a physician assistant. The House lost Riverton’s Rep. Ember Oakley, a prominent and outspoken lawmaker, to Joel Guggenmos. In Cheyenne, Ann Lucas defeated Rep. Dan Zwonitzer, who had been in the House for nearly 20 years. 

“We are humbled by the support of the grassroots patriots across our State and grateful for the hard work of the conservative candidates who slayed giants last night,” the Wyoming Freedom Caucus posted on its Facebook page the next day. 

Jarvis left the party soon after the results were published. At daybreak the next morning, Bohren started traversing Casper’s thoroughfares, collecting Jarvis’ campaign signs. Win, lose or draw, he and Jarvis had agreed that they would begin doing this the day after the primaries, because the people in House District 57 were tired from the campaign season. A pile of Jarvis’ signs accumulated in Bohren’s barn. “They’ll be good in two years,” he later said.  

Jarvis didn’t think about what the statewide election results might mean for her future as a lawmaker. “I’m a firm believer that what’s supposed to happen will happen, and what’s supposed to be will be, and you make the best of what it is,” she later said. It was similar to Ward’s reflection on her loss — “Duty is ours; results are God’s.” Jarvis had purview only over her own district, and in representing the people of that community as best as she could. This is where she would exert her energy, and there was still much to be done. Her focus until the general election would be to continue collecting responses to her survey. 

But for now, she had another long day of presentations to prepare for. Jarvis arrived at work by 5:45 that morning to make copies of lesson plan examples. The building was empty. There was no noise but her and the copy machine, which rhythmically churned out pages in a windowless hallway. She returned to her office to answer emails. People began to arrive. The day grew light outside. 

The post The takeover: A reluctant politician, a far-right firebrand and the fight for Wyoming conservatism appeared first on WyoFile .

New video of the moments leading up to Kenneth R. Durrah’s death in the Campbell County Detention Center raises questions about jail guards’ use of certain restraint practices to subdue individuals in their custody.

The video of the 2022 incident — obtained recently by WyoFile and the Gillette News Record through a public records request — shows for the first time what happened in the hours before Durrah died naked, strapped to a restraint chair. The recording shows Durrah ingesting suspected methamphetamine, scuffling with guards, being pinned face-down on a cell floor, complaining that he can’t breathe, being forcibly stripped, strapped to a restraint chair, pleading for help and ultimately dying.

Independent law enforcement and medical experts who’ve seen the footage suggest guards failed to adhere to known best practices and long-standing federal guidance for restraining an individual. The U.S. Department of Justice, they note, has long warned that prolonged use of belly-down restraints can be lethal, especially for people like Durrah under the influence of drugs. 

After reviewing the footage those experts also questioned the autopsy’s official conclusion that Durrah’s death was not “restraint related.” Experts maintain that the high level of methamphetamine, detected by a post-mortem toxicology test, likely played a significant role in Durrah’s death, but several who spoke to WyoFile said that they would not rule out the use of restraints as a contributing factor.

“I counted over five minutes with weight on his back, and we know for sure that [position] can be, in the right circumstances, deadly,” EMS educator, paramedic and restraint expert Eric Jaeger said. “So I definitely think that he suffered significant harm.”

Campbell County Sheriff Scott Matheny and Jail Captain Kevin Theis both stand by how guards handled the incident, citing situationally appropriate use of officer discretion to explain the prolonged use of physical restraints and the decision not to call for emergency medical care sooner.

“[Durrah] made the decision to bring the stuff in,” Matheny said. “He made the decision to take the stuff. He made the decision to do all that, and this is what happens. It’s unfortunate that that happened. But it wasn’t the decisions [of the jail]. He made those decisions.”

Final hours

The video, which largely corroborates the narrative and timeline produced by the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation about 15 months after the death, adds significant detail about the final moments of Durrah’s life. 

The nearly three-hour video begins in the early hours of Dec. 1, 2022 with Durrah — who’d been held in the Campbell County Detention Center for about a week — complaining of chest pains. He was then taken from his cell to booking where he was cleared by two EMTs. (Both responders later declined to cooperate with DCI investigators under the guidance of Campbell County Health’s legal counsel.)

While in a booking cell, after being medically cleared, Durrah appeared to hold something up to the cell-door window, then put the object in his mouth. Guards suspected it was a bag of meth, though that isn’t clear in the video, and the bag, or remnants of it, were not listed by DCI as evidence collected from the scene. 

Guards entered the cell, pushed Durrah against the back wall and commanded him not to swallow whatever he put in his mouth. 

Durrah pushed through the cell door out into the booking area. 

Several guards forced Durrah to the floor, cuffed his hands behind his back and restrained him there, face down. The officers carried him to a padded booking cell where four guards again pinned Durrah on his belly to the ground, this time for several minutes. One guard kneeled on Durrah’s head and hip while another kneeled on his back. Two other guards restrained his legs, sometimes kneeling on his lower legs and ankles. 

Using trauma shears, guards cut Durrah’s orange jumpsuit from his body. 

While pinned, Durrah periodically strained and resisted. He complained that he could not breathe. Durrah pleaded with guards to listen to him about “DCI investigators” but the audio is hard to make out. He moaned and screamed repeatedly.

“I don’t care what you have to say,” one deputy yelled at Durrah. “Just shut up.” 

Durrah replied inaudibly.

Guards yelled at him again to “shut up.” 

Four guards lifted Durrah from the ground and placed him in a restraint chair. A guard tightened a strap across his waist then another removed the handcuffs. Officers placed straps across his arms and chest. They retightened the straps.

“I can’t breathe,” Durrah said.

“You can breathe, buddy. You’re talking,” one officer responded.

Durrah complained, “it’s too tight, please.”  

Then he pleaded, “I’m dying, help.” 

The deputies told him he was breathing fine. They did not adjust any straps.

The doorway of the cell partly obscures the video of Durrah in the chair, but he can be heard moaning and seen struggling to move his legs. The longer he spent in the restraint chair the less he moved. 

Jail staff found him unresponsive roughly 35-40 minutes after he was left alone, restrained and naked in the booking cell. They called EMTs and struggled to remove Durrah from the restraint chair to begin CPR. 

He was pronounced dead at Campbell County Health’s hospital soon after.

Leaving a mark

Weston County Attorney Michael Stulken, who was appointed special prosecutor, reviewed DCI’s investigation and decided in March not to seek criminal charges against anyone involved.

In his letter explaining the decision, Stulken wrote that the autopsy report was of considerable significance to his decision-making.

The autopsy report says, “at the postmortem examination, no significant blunt force traumatic injuries were found to suggest he had been injured during the efforts to contain his aggressiveness.” Experts, however, say ruling out restraints as a cause of death cannot be determined from a post-mortem examination alone because lethal restraints don’t always leave a mark.

“People are held down on their belly or have their breathing impaired — especially when they are highly, highly stressed metabolically — it’s more of a diffuse pressure on the body,” said Brooks Walsh, an emergency physician who specializes in cardiology, resuscitation and preventing lethal restraints.

That diffuse pressure won’t necessarily leave specific bruises or abrasions, which is why public access to the video is critical to understanding how and why Durrah died, Walsh said.

Thomas Bennett, the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, said he was not provided video before determining Durrah’s death was not restraint related, and he agreed that the absence of bruising, or lines of restraint, “doesn’t rule out compression, because you can compress something, obviously, and not bruise it.”

But in his autopsy report, Bennett said, “it is my opinion that he did not die of respiratory complications of being restrained, but rather that he was overstimulated by the drugs, irrespective of the restraints.”

When Walsh and two other experts reviewed the video, all three concluded that the roughly five minutes Durrah was face down with guards’ weight on his back contributed to his death.

Even though Durrah can still be heard vocalizing while pinned to the cell floor, Walsh and Jaeger, the paramedic, explained the 5-foot-6, 142-pound man likely couldn’t breathe well enough to clear carbon dioxide from his system, leading to a lethal lactic acid build-up in his system, or acidosis.

Bennett agreed that Durrah’s vocalizations would not rule out the possibility of positional asphyxia, or put more simply, being in a position that prevented him from breathing adequately. “That’s a very good point,” he said, adding that post-mortem blood tests would not be conclusive because CPR, which deputies performed on Durrah, also produces elevated levels of lactic acid.

Upon finally reviewing the videos obtained by WyoFile and the Gillette News Record, Bennett said “the most evidence is pointing to us calling this a methamphetamine overdose.” When asked if the extended time Durrah spent restrained on his belly contributed to his death, Bennett said it was too hard to see in the video if and how guards were applying their body weight. 

“We don’t know exactly where they placed their knees,” Bennett said. “Because I saw them on the buttocks. I saw them on arms. I saw them, it could have been on the back, but it was so shielded I couldn’t see.”  

Numerous public officials in Iowa and Montana, where Bennett previously did forensic pathology, have raised concerns about his work, but he defends his record. 

Best restraint practices

As far back as 1995, the U.S. Department of Justice warned that law enforcement restraining people on their bellies with pressure on their backs for prolonged periods can lead to death.

Through “analysis of in-custody deaths, we discovered evidence that unexplained in-custody deaths are caused more often than is generally known by a little-known phenomenon called positional asphyxia,” the DOJ bulletin states.

“A person lying on his stomach has trouble breathing when pressure is applied to his back. The remedy seems relatively simple: get the pressure off his back,” the bulletin reads. “However, during a violent struggle between an officer or officers and a suspect, the solution is not as simple as it may sound. Often, the situation is compounded by a vicious cycle of suspect resistance and officer restraint.”

The risk that belly-down restraints could lead to death is even higher for alcohol and drug users — especially people on cocaine and meth — the DOJ found.

To avoid positional asphyxia, the DOJ recommended to law enforcement: “As soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach.”

Contrary to those recommendations, Durrah was held in the prone position twice. First for close to a minute while deputies cuffed him, but instead of immediately placing him in an upright position, they moved him to a cell and placed him on his belly again so they could strip him naked. He remained pinned to the ground by multiple deputies for close to five minutes before they strapped him to a restraint chair.

“Unless there’s something we don’t know, but just looking at the video, there was really no need for him to be left naked,” said retired sheriff Gary Raney, a national expert on jail deaths and use of force.

In Durrah’s case, even if he hid drugs in his jail coveralls, he wouldn’t have been able to access them completely immobilized in a restraint chair, Raney said.

No matter what, “nobody should be left naked,” Raney said. “All it is, is humiliating and degrading.” Even if someone is suicidal, staff might take off jail coveralls and replace them with a suicide-resistant garment, Raney said.

The deputies’ decision to not immediately transfer Durrah to a restraint chair and instead cut off his orange jumpsuit led to him being pinned under the weight of multiple deputies for five minutes.

Theis, the Campbell County jail captain, said the decision to remove Durrah’s clothing was justified based on him having already concealed drugs on him when he was taken from his cell to booking that night.

“It’s a strip search is what it is,” said Undersheriff Quentin Reynolds. “They’re trying to make sure that he doesn’t have any more contraband.”

Theis said that it’s rare to cut off an inmate’s clothing, and estimated that it happens in the neighborhood of six to eight times a year, mostly as a protective measure with suicidal inmates. When guards do remove an inmate’s clothing, once that person has calmed down, they usually provide a smock — a protective gown that covers the inmate but can’t easily be used to harm themselves.  

There was a delay in bringing the restraint chair because the one closest, which is seen in the video, did not have all of the straps guards wanted, Theis said. 

The jail’s restraint chair policy doesn’t specify the amount of time that it should take to strap an inmate into it, but does clarify that it should take “only the necessary amount of force needed to bring the situation safely and effectively under control.”

“Just to the point where you’re comfortable you have control to move to the next step,” Theis said of restraining inmates prior to putting them into the chair. “It took them a while to get him stripped down because he was continuously resisting.”

Cautious with his criticism because the only information he has is what he could see in the video, Raney suggested staff struggled to restrain Durrah because they didn’t have a strong command of the restraints they were using. 

“I don’t know enough details, but it looks like the application of their force techniques was not very good,” Raney said of the five minutes Durrah was pinned on his belly. “Like, they weren’t very experienced or practiced or trained or something. Because there were things that they could have done that I think would have been a little bit more successful without having to put so much pressure on his torso.”

The Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy instructs officers “to place one knee on or near the individual’s hip and the other knee on the side of the head,” according to face-down stabilization training materials obtained by WyoFile. “The officer’s hips should be low and balanced. Most of the officer’s weight is placed on the individual’s hip, however more weight may be distributed to the side of the head as is reasonable.” 

When deputies put Durrah in the face-down restraint, they kneeled on his head and hip, as well as his back.

The video also raised questions for Raney about whether pressure from the restraint chair’s waist belt continued to inhibit Durrah’s breathing. 

“One of the deputies who put across the waist belt on the restraint chair pulls it very hard,” Raney observed.

Because the video blurs out the area around Durrah’s genitals, Raney said it was hard to tell whether the waist belt was too high and up across his abdomen near his diaphragm, where it could restrain breathing. 

“Regardless, there’s really no need to cinch the waist belt that tight,” Raney said. 

Sheriff’s response

In standing by the jail’s handling of the incident, Matheny said that jail officers exercised their discretion in handling the situation and that he approved of their decisions throughout. 

DCI’s review of the incident took more than a year, which complicated internal sheriff’s office reviews of the incident and how it was handled, he said. 

Although sheriff’s office leaders review use-of-force instances and high-speed chases when officers are involved, Matheny said there was not a formal review of videos of the incident with Durrah.  

There have likewise been no policy changes made in response to the incident, Theis said. He did, however, talk with the jail workers involved before they began their next shift the night after the incident.

“We didn’t necessarily cover any rights or wrongs, we just kind of debriefed, talked about it, see where everybody’s at, make sure that they’re comfortable to go back on the floor, see if we needed to give some more time off or not,” he said.  

Theis said that with a DCI investigation underway at the time, they were careful not to color the statements made by officers involved.

“We wanted to make sure they’re keeping their statements true to the investigation and what they told them,” he said. “By reviewing it, it may put different things in their minds. I wanted to make sure I didn’t interfere with that.”

Theis said he had mostly told jail workers they had handled the situation well and encouraged them to move forward in a positive way.

Per policy, guards are to check on inmates four times per hour after strapping them into a restraint chair, monitoring the person’s health and whether the restraints are affecting circulation, breathing or otherwise causing distress. Video showed guards looking into the cell while Durrah was in the chair, with the final check coming when guards realized he had stopped breathing. 

Then it took deputies two minutes to get Durrah out of the chair before they began chest compressions. 

As to whether guards should have called for an ambulance sooner, Theis said, “when I have time to think about it, a year later, we probably should have done that.” But the jail captain isn’t sure he would have made that decision in the moment. “I can’t say I would have called them back either.”

From the perspective of managing the jail, Reynolds, the undersheriff, said it’s important for officers to make decisions based on their assessment of a given situation, including matters of health —  a common variable in an environment where so many prisoners have recent histories of alcohol and drug use.

“What percentage of our clientele comes through the back door under the influence of drugs or alcohol?” Reynolds said. “And we don’t know or we can’t determine how recently they ingested that, the quantity or dosage.”

Jail officers have the discretion to decide whether to allow someone into the jail based on health, just as they can decide whether to call an ambulance based on the health of someone already in the jail.

Medical checks are routine as part of the booking process, Theis said, which involves reviewing medical history and a vitals check with jail nursing staff, with a goal of doing so within 12 hours of arrival.

“We have people come in under the influence all of the time under varying capacities,” Theis said. “We’re not sure why we didn’t call EMS again but we’re always used to seeing and dealing with people, and they put on big shows.

“Sometimes it’s hard to weed them out based on their ability to act, whether they’re convincing or not, or if we just know they’re just being disruptive to be disruptive because they don’t want to be in jail that day,” Theis said. 

Of the eight detention officers on shift that night, three had fewer than two years of experience and four had worked about three to four years, according to employment dates provided by the sheriff’s office. The shift sergeant on duty had worked more than 20 years with the agency. 

Matheny said that relative inexperience in the jail from some of the officers involved did not negatively factor into their response that night.

“Some were affected more so than others based on their career and something like that had never happened in their work environment,” Theis said. “It is kind of traumatizing the first time you encounter death in the job.”

The jail, an entry-level start to many careers in the sheriff’s office, has struggled to maintain its staff in recent years. The agency has raised starting pay and lowered age requirements in an effort to broaden and retain its employee pool. 

“To get people, recruit people to come into this job, it’s tough,” Matheny said. “And when something like this comes to light, it just makes it difficult to get people to come to work. This is an important job. Somebody’s got to do it. We take it serious. We have to protect those people in the jail and we have to protect the community, and it makes that difficult.”

‘Good questions’

In Wyoming, it’s up to the elected county sheriff to decide the degree of scrutiny county jail deaths receive. A sheriff may request an external investigation from DCI or another law enforcement agency, conduct an internal review or do nothing. 

When DCI is asked to investigate, the state agency focuses exclusively on criminal wrongdoing. Whether officers adhered to local protocol or DOJ guidelines are not questions DCI seeks to answer. 

“Our role is strictly to conduct an investigation, gather the facts and present it to a prosecutor,” DCI Director Ronnie Jones said. 

“It’s not our role to come in and say, ‘you know, you guys aren’t following best practices, or you guys violated one of your policies and procedures.’ Or ‘here’s what you need to do to be better moving forward.’ That’s not our role.” 

Because of DCI’s explicit focus “on whether a crime was committed based on existing statutes,” Jones said, “I recognize … there can be [an] appearance that there’s gaps in our investigations,” when policies and procedures, or the lack thereof, go unaddressed. 

Jones added, those are the questions local law enforcement should examine during their own internal review of an incident after the criminal investigation is complete, which Campbell County has not done.

It took more than a year for the DCI report to land on a special prosecutor’s desk. That period included a roughly eight-month gap in documented updates. Documented progress of the investigation resumed the day after another inmate, Dennis Green, died by suicide inside a Campbell County Courthouse holding cell.

“It was 100% our fault. We did not get it done as quickly as we should have,” Jones said of the delay in the Durrah investigation, acknowledging that “unfortunately, has put the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office in a tough spot.” 

For more than a year while Durrah’s death was under investigation, the details of the case were off limits to his family, journalists and the public. And while DCI didn’t examine Campbell County’s protocols for use of force and medical emergencies, or how they stack up against best practices, “they’re good questions to be asking,” Jones said. “I think they’re good questions for the public to be asking.”

The post Video of Campbell County jail death calls restraint and medical protocols into question appeared first on WyoFile .

Bondurant sits about halfway between Pinedale and Jackson along scenic Highway 191 in western Wyoming. The area is buffeted by the Gros Ventre Wilderness, Hoback River, and both the Wind River and Wyoming ranges. From the road along the valley floor, you can see abrupt pine-tree-freckled hills and the snowy peaks of nearby mountains to the northwest.

The tranquil location is a draw to folks like Sam Sumrall and his wife, who retired there after moving from Mississippi. But it comes with risks.

“We lived in the country [in Mississippi], but we were literally five minutes from the hospital, five minutes from Walmart,” he said. “When we moved out here, we did so with the awareness of the fact that we weren’t going to have that luxury.”

Bondurant is part of Sublette County, the only county in Wyoming without a hospital. About 40 miles southeast on Highway 191, a new hospital under construction in Pinedale — the county’s largest community — is expected to open next year. However, the EMS crews based there are already covering 5,000 square miles with just a few ambulances. 

In the winter of 2022-23, Sumrall was one of only three volunteer firefighters who lived in the town of around 100, all of whom only had basic first aid training and couldn’t transport patients. If someone needs to be transferred to a hospital, the closest emergency medical services are more than 30 minutes away. Life flights have to be used at times — but those can be expensive and take time to call in, too. 

Response times are important because they can directly translate to the survivability of a medical event. That’s especially true for severe trauma, stroke and heart attack.

The scenery and limited taxes attract retirees to the area. But they should know about the limitations of EMS there, Sumrall told WyoFile in an interview last year. 

“It’s not for everybody, it’s just not,” he said. “But, you know, we do everything we can to educate people.”

Since then, the volunteer group in Bondurant has grown to 10 people, according to Sublette County Unified Fire Chief Shad Cooper, thanks to support from those who were planning a luxury resort. However, that project is now planning to move elsewhere, putting future EMS sustainability at risk once again. 

Bondurant’s isolation from emergency services isn’t unique. In fact, all Wyoming counties — and rural areas across the country — are considered EMS deserts. 

Providing emergency medical care has become increasingly challenging in a state with small communities scattered across wide open spaces. Across Wyoming, EMS agencies are grappling with funding struggles brought on by rising costs, declining volunteerism and insufficient levels of reimbursement.

Those challenges raise simple but profound questions. When we call 911, should we expect someone to arrive? Who should that be, and how long should it take? 

And what are we willing to pay to save a life? 

In this three-part series, WyoFile explores the importance of EMS, why it’s so hard to maintain in Wyoming and where there’s hope for the future. 

Expectations vs. reality

Andy Gienapp directed Wyoming’s Office of EMS for 11 years, and after leaving in 2021, is now deputy executive director of the National Association of State EMS Officials. He’s long known rural EMS was facing a money problem. 

“I was trying to ring this alarm bell 10 years ago,” he said during a conversation last year. 

Part of the problem is people take EMS for granted, Gienapp said. During presentations when he was working in Wyoming, he’d give local groups a scenario where the governor signed an order so counties were no longer required to provide certain expected services like snow removal and education. Locals were “aghast.” The order wasn’t real, he’d tell them, but the outrage was.  

“And yet, we’re OK with not paying for what we all consider to be an essential service, and not paying for an ambulance?” he asked. 

Gienapp noted that people still expect someone skilled to arrive in a timely manner if they call 911. That was backed up by the Wyoming Department of Health’s listening sessions in 2022, which found many people living in and around towns expected the best emergency medical care. 

What people don’t often understand is the money that allows EMS to respond to medical emergencies is far from guaranteed. 

EMS funding comes from a complicated patchwork of counties, towns, hospitals, property taxes, grants, insurance reimbursements and direct patient payments. EMS also operates under a variety of organizational structures ranging from private companies and hospitals to local governments. 

That is to say, there’s not much funding uniformity among EMS agencies.

And an ambulance ride isn’t cheap. Those paying big bills for the service may wonder why EMS needs public money at all. But the problem is one Wyoming sees all too often: not enough people.

If no calls come in, or if a patient doesn’t need a ride to the hospital, EMS agencies don’t make money. If EMTs or paramedics are being paid by the hour, and the vehicles still need maintenance and expensive equipment, the math doesn’t work. 

When the Legislature’s Labor Health and Social Services Interim Committee met in April 2023, health department officials noted that about 30% to 35% of 911 responses go fully unreimbursed because patients aren’t transported. Others are only partially reimbursed. 

Meanwhile, to keep a Wyoming ambulance with basic life support running, it costs an average of $527,000 a year in staffing and equipment, the health department estimates. That translates to 650 reimbursed trips per year to just break even, which is hard to achieve for many Wyoming communities.

Advanced life support — utilizing more complicated procedures and medications to help those who need a higher level of care — costs even more.

“For advanced life support, 1,400 to 2,000 transports per year would be required to break even solely on a fee-for-service basis,” said Wyoming Department of Health Director Stefan Johansson, referencing the average. 

Some point to the reimbursement-funding model as the original sin that made rural EMS so difficult to sustain. The concept for emergency medical services in the U.S. only started in the 1950s and became a robust, formalized system in the ‘70s and ‘80s. 

To change it now would take every level of government, according to Dia Gainor, executive director of the National Association of State EMS Officials.

“That would require a very strong dose of federalism,” Gainor said. “And I’m using the textbook governmental term there, which means something collaborative at the federal and state and local level, because each one of those levels of government has a different capacity and different role to make change.”

Expectations have only increased since the ‘80s for vehicles that transport patients as well as training for the EMS employees. More time and training — and finding training opportunities that fit into a busy schedule — also translate into fewer people willing to volunteer their time.

Staffing

Nationally, EMS volunteerism is starting to slump, even though volunteers long made up more than 70% of the staff. A similar trend is true for Wyoming. Some blame complacency of residents, while others note the skyrocketing costs of housing, groceries and gas. Why not find a paying job to support your family instead?

Sumrall in Bondurant is in his early 70s, and said last fall that he wasn’t sure he could leave the volunteer fire department just yet. 

“Personally, I want to make sure that the battalion is in good shape with a replacement for me before I leave, because the manpower shortage would just be magnified, especially during the winter months,” he said. 

During an AARP webinar, Jen Davis — Gov. Mark Gordon’s health and human services policy advisor — noted that younger people are moving out of the state while older people are moving in.

“Some recent data that we saw in the last couple of months, Wyoming has one of the largest out migration[s] of our population, particularly in the younger generation,” she said in January. “Wyoming is up on in-migration. However, it is with older adults who are retiring and coming to Wyoming.”

She added that through the Wyoming Innovation Partnership, the governor’s office established a program to fund education and training for EMTs and paramedics. But, she added, “the program may run out of money quicker than we anticipated because of the need and the response so far.”

It can also be hard to entice career EMTs or paramedics into rural areas without enough pay, for which there’s no uniform amount. And once people get into the position of EMT, they tend to want to move up to paramedic, firefighter, nurse or doctor.

In Cody, EMTs received a pay increase a few years ago. Evan James Bartel, who’s worked there for three years, told WyoFile last summer he appreciated it. Things were tight. 

“They did a tremendous bump last year, prior to which … I drove past every fast food restaurant in this town and saw they were advertising more starting [pay] than I was making here,” he said. 

Bartel has since worked his way up to become a paramedic, a position that pays better and can perform more kinds of medical services. But the job is not about the money, he said. He loves helping the community and the diversity of challenges that come with the job.

Likewise, Braydon Bond was working to become a paramedic last August as one stepping stone on his way to medical school. EMS is great training for doctors, he said, but there’s not much financial incentive to work in it — it’s more about passion and training. 

“I see EMS as the very fundamentals of emergency/patient care,” he said.

Staffing, funding for operations and inadequate wages are Wyoming EMS agencies’ greatest perceived challenges, according to the health department’s 2022 report.

At the same time, a major issue for reimbursement comes from those who either can’t afford to pay for their ambulance ride or who belong to government federal insurance programs. Reimbursement rates under the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services have barely budged compared to increasing costs, according to a 2022 report from national nonprofit FAIR Health Consumer. 

About 40% – 50% of Wyoming EMS responses are for Medicare recipients, according to the state health department. That program is reserved for those over 65 and people with specific disabilities and conditions. It rarely reimburses for the full cost of a service, sticking extra charges with patients or, when patients can’t pay, the EMS agency.

Medicaid reimbursements are even lower than Medicare rates. States have some say in Medicaid — states like Idaho and Indiana recently increased rates for EMS — but it can be a hard sell for lawmakers who oppose new taxes. 

Michael Petty is a volunteer firefighter with Sublette County Unified Fire living near Big Piney. His day job is working as a field safety specialist in oil and gas.

With decreasing funding from fossil fuels in Wyoming, Petty said, people won’t be able to count on the EMS services they’ve come to expect without paying for them in a new way.

“People still want to have really good care and be cared for where they live,” he said. “The money has to come from somewhere.”

Wyoming is one of 10 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid to cover more uninsured people here, leaving thousands who may not be able to pay ambulance and medical bills. The Wyoming Hospital Association has said that’s harming hospitals, many of which operate local EMS services.

Medicaid expansion could help, advocates say, but that would cost the state $22 million every two years, according to Department of Health estimates. The Legislature has discussed expanding Medicaid numerous times, but a fear that the federal government will someday leave states with the full cost has won out.

Essential service?

There have also been efforts to make EMS an “essential service” in Wyoming so every county or community must have access to it. More than a dozen states have done something similar, including nearby Colorado and Nebraska.

However, those efforts have failed so far here, mainly due to one key point: Many lawmakers don’t want to pass an unfunded mandate. The vast majority of counties — 21 out of 23 — maxed out the 12 levies allowed by the state last year. If communities are expected to fund EMS and can’t pass more levies, or if locals vote against a hospital or EMS district, where does money for the service come from? Funding for the schools? The roads? 

For Luke Sypherd, president of the Wyoming EMS Association, if anything should be mandatory, it should be the crew of people responding to medical emergencies.

“There are other things that are certainly not essential to life or limb that are put ahead of emergency medical services,” he said. 

County fairgrounds might be culturally important, but why should they get priority over a medic who can save someone’s life, he wonders. 

To help sustain his own EMS agency within Cody Regional Health, Sypherd said he’s partially leaned on grants, amounting to about $3 million the last few years. 

“Taxpayers here have paid taxes, and we’re trying to bring some of that back into our community,” he said.

But he hasn’t seen state lawmakers make the same effort to preserve emergency services.

“There’s this idea that’s circulated that we can’t afford it, and that’s completely false,” he said. “We choose not to afford it. At least the legislators of the state of Wyoming have chosen that they’re not going to afford stable EMS systems.”

At the statewide level, Sen. Fred Baldwin (R-Kemmerer) pushed for an essential service designation, noting that parts of the state — like the southwest — are struggling and now reaching crisis levels, he said. Baldwin is a physician assistant and volunteer fire chief in Kemmerer, but has worked with EMS in various capacities for decades.

“We’re losing services,” he said. “There are small places, small communities, where if one EMT is sick, and the other one is on vacation, and you dial 911, they don’t have an ambulance. There’s nobody there.”

Others are operating equipment that’s on its last legs, he said. Still, he acknowledged, funding is difficult when EMS is a money-losing business in much of Wyoming.

“Nobody wants to talk about raising taxes,” he said. “You know, you want things, but you don’t want to have to pay for them. It’s difficult. It’s a conundrum, and I don’t know the answer. I wish I did. I’ve been trying to find one for several years.”

However, Baldwin didn’t seek reelection. 

Other lawmakers remain skeptical. 

“Given that only 13 states have said that EMS is essential, I don’t see the need for Wyoming to do that,” said Jeanette Ward (R-Casper), voting against an essential service designation last April. “And I think that generally, in general, when people call for an ambulance, one shows up.”

Another solution: Community EMS

Johansson and the governor’s office has asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services — generally referred to as CMS — to rethink how the federal government reimburses EMS calls in rural areas, he said. While rates are hard to change on the federal level, he suggested Medicare could reimburse for “community” EMS.

“Meaning that there’s more of a community-based approach that doesn’t require a trip to the hospital to kind of satisfy payment conditions,” he said. 

That is, he wants EMS agencies to be reimbursed for helping someone in their home instead of only getting money for a transport, something he’s mentioned Wyoming Medicaid has started to do.

It’s an idea that Sypherd with the EMS association has said so far hasn’t generated enough money on the ground, especially as major payers like Medicare won’t reimburse for it.

“Right now, you are not going to get enough money to support yourself out of community EMS,” he said. 

When Johansson has asked CMS to start implementing this kind of community paramedicine reimbursement, he says agency officials will often just say they understand Wyoming’s challenges and “we’ll communicate that up the chain.” Then, nothing happens. 

CMS did run a pilot program for something similar called ET3, or the Emergency Triage, Treat, and Transport model. That program reimbursed EMS for transporting patients to facilities like urgent cares or to primary care providers instead of hospital emergency rooms. It also reimbursed agencies for treating patients at home or via telehealth. 

However, that experiment ended two years early on Dec. 31, citing “lower-than-expected” participation and administrative costs exceeding potential long-term savings. Of the program’s 152 participants, none were in Wyoming. 

In the meantime, Johansson remains frustrated with CMS’ lack of follow-through, and said his office and the governor’s office will continue to push for new reimbursement models. 

“It is frustrating that one of the — if not the — largest payers of this type of service has kind of been somewhat intractable on those policy changes,” he said. 

But some individual EMS agencies, he added, are requesting enhanced CMS reimbursement rates, arguing they should be considered the sole critical access medical provider in a rural area that may also include a nearby fire department. 

Some involved in EMS suggest U.S. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) could help spur CMS into action because of his medical background as an orthopedist. The senator didn’t return emails and calls for comment.

In the second part of this series “A Critical Call” on EMS in Wyoming, WyoFile looks at whether local agencies’ creative workarounds are enough to fill funding gaps. 

The post Should the state provide life support to Wyoming’s ailing ambulance services? appeared first on WyoFile .

Kenneth Durrah spent the last 40 minutes of his life naked and strapped to a restraint chair in the Campbell County Detention Center. 

Earlier that evening, EMTs cleared Durrah, who had reported chest pain and trouble breathing, to remain in the jail. Shortly after, detention deputies saw him swallow what appeared to be methamphetamine. Then they restrained Durrah and left him in a booking area cell where they checked on him periodically. Video from the jail captured Durrah yelling. “I can’t breathe,” he called out. “I’m dying. Help!” But it took six minutes for a deputy to check on him in person. 

After that, deputies entered the cell several times to make sure Durrah was still responsive, but no medical care was provided. They didn’t call for an ambulance until staff discovered the 35-year-old man in their custody was unconscious. 

Durrah’s final moments are detailed in a Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation report obtained by WyoFile and the Gillette News Record through a public records request. The DCI investigation, which took 15 months to complete, cleared jail staff of criminal wrongdoing. 

“The deceased’s death likely was caused by a methamphetamine overdose, as evidenced by high levels of such substance indicated in the toxicology report, and the cardiac effects of excited delirium,” Weston County Attorney Michael Stulken wrote in a letter explaining why he declined to press charges.  

Multiple medical experts who reviewed the case shared concerns about Stulken’s characterization that Durrah died from “the cardiac effects of excited delirium.” The term, which was commonly used to explain lethal encounters with police, has been abandoned as a diagnosis by most major medical associations. 

Dr. Thomas Bennett, who conducted the autopsy, told WyoFile he also no longer uses “excited delirium” as a cause of death. That’s why, Bennett said, he used the phrase “consistent with excited delirium due to methamphetamine overdose” in the autopsy report and not “caused by excited delirium.” Bennett was not contacted by Stulken for more information, the doctor said. 

Stulken declined comment Friday.   

The term “excited delirium” suggests the death was beyond jail staff’s control, medical experts say, and obscures questions about the dangers of certain restraint techniques or why EMS wasn’t called immediately after deputies watched him ingest what they suspected was meth. 

No diagnostic language can, however, address an even more fundamental question: How did Durrah obtain a lethal amount of methamphetamine inside the jail?

The Campbell County Sheriff’s Office says detention deputies responded to the incident appropriately, but admitted there are ongoing challenges keeping drugs out of the jail and did not have an explanation as to why emergency medical personnel weren’t called a second time.

Medical experts and Durrah’s family who reviewed the DCI report were left with questions surrounding the circumstances and explanation of Durrah’s death. 

“It still doesn’t make sense to me that you saw somebody ingest drugs and you cut off their clothes and put them in a chair,” said Joshua Durrah, Kenneth’s brother. “That’s negligent.”

Dec. 1, 2022

Flickering cell lights inside the Campbell County jail’s Q block marked the first signs of Durrah’s initial medical episode at about 1:20 a.m. on Dec. 1, 2022.  

More inmates began flashing lights on and off, signaling to gain the attention of jail staff who arrived a few minutes later outside of Durrah’s cell — No. 15.

DCI agent Zack Miller, who investigated the death, documented the sequence of events in a summary of video footage from inside the jail, and accounts told to him by jail staff involved in the incident.

Durrah, who had complained of chest pains and trouble breathing, was described as thrashing on the ground in his cell when deputies apparently hooked him up to a medical device before helping him to his feet and walking with him from his cell block to the booking area.

Two EMTs, who later refused to cooperate with DCI investigators under the guidance of Campbell County Health legal counsel, evaluated Durrah and cleared him to remain in jail. Deputies recounted to DCI that the EMTs told Durrah his heart rate was elevated because he was holding his breath.

At 1:46 a.m., Durrah, under direction from jail staff, walked himself into cell No. 5, still in the booking area. Several minutes later he was heard asking for water, with the report noting that he did not have labored breathing and spoke clearly.

A back-and-forth ensued while Durrah asked for water repeatedly. Throughout Durrah’s time in the booking area, jail staff and investigators said he displayed what they described as erratic behavior.

“What is that?” a camera recorded one deputy saying at 2:15 a.m., while another said, “Do not swallow it!”

Several jail staff described the object as a small plastic bag with suspected meth that Durrah then put in his mouth. Two deputies entered the cell attempting to grab what Durrah was trying to swallow. Then he apparently burst from the cell with one of the deputies hanging onto his uniform while several other jail officers tried to take hold of him. They brought him to the ground, where they handcuffed him.

While handcuffed, Durrah asked deputies for Narcan and apparently said that he had taken an “8-ball,” slang for an eighth-ounce of drugs, often cocaine or meth.  

Between 2:18 and 2:23 a.m., jail staff cut Durrah’s uniform off and strapped him into a restraint chair, which they wheeled into booking cell No. 13. The door was left open, within view of cameras positioned in the booking area.  

From the time of the scuffle through his placement in the restraining chair, Durrah was yelling and screaming, and told deputies several times that he was HIV positive, the DCI report states.

At 2:28 a.m., video showed Durrah moving while in the restraint chair and captured him yelling “I can’t breathe. I’m dying. Help!”

Deputies began a rotation of checks on Durrah beginning with one at 2:34 a.m., then 2:44 a.m. and 2:51 a.m.

Ten minutes later, at 3:01 a.m., a deputy found Durrah unresponsive and an ambulance was called. After attempts at CPR, Durrah was taken to the Campbell County Memorial Hospital where he was pronounced dead.  

Special prosecutor 

The investigating DCI agent and Campbell County Attorney Nathan Henkes met Oct. 12 regarding Durrah’s death, according to DCI’s report, shortly after another death occurred in Campbell County Sheriff’s Office custody. Dennis Green died while in sheriff’s office custody after attempting suicide Sept. 21 inside a holding cell in the Campbell County Courthouse. He’d been brought there for a hearing.

In December, the county attorney’s office brought Durrah’s case along with Green’s — which the Gillette Police Department investigated — to county commissioners, who forwarded each case to special prosecutors outside the county to avoid potential conflicts of interest. 

It took less than three months for Green’s investigation to make it to a special prosecutor, while Durrah’s case took more than a year.  

Durrah’s brother Joshua said he and his family have been frustrated by the drawn-out investigation that took months to pass through the offices of Campbell and Weston county prosecutors. The DCI report shows a lag in new reports entered, starting last January, with an entry approved by Louey Williams, ​​former team leader of DCI’s northeastern region. No new entries were made until Sept. 22, the day after Green was found inside the courthouse. That entry was approved Sept. 29 by Chad Quarterman, DCI’s current northeastern region team leader, who took over after Williams’s retirement.  

Stulken described his decision not to seek charges against anyone involved in the case in a letter to Wyoming DCI dated March 4 of this year.

News of his decision was made public by Sheriff Scott Matheny on March 13, more than 15 months after Durrah died and more than three months after the DCI report was sent to a special prosecutor for review.

Joshua said he reached out to the Weston County Attorney’s Office prior to Stulken’s decision, and that he didn’t hear back until more than two weeks after the decision had been made.

“And I didn’t hear it from him first, I had to hear it from the news,” Joshua said. “I just think this whole thing was handled unprofessionally, it wasn’t handled with any decency. It feels like almost everybody is covering up something for each other and that there’s no true justice being sought for the death of my brother.”

Excited delirium

Stulken declined to bring criminal charges against jail staff because the autopsy “indicates no outside physical injuries were had relating to this case and that the deceased’s death likely was caused by a methamphetamine overdose, as evidenced by high levels of such substance indicated in the toxicology report, and the cardiac effects of excited delirium,” he explained in his letter to DCI. 

“There is really no evidence to indicate that this was a restraint related death,” Stulken wrote. 

Outside experts who reviewed the autopsy, toxicology and investigatory documents agreed that methamphetamine likely played a role in Durrah’s death, but challenged the use of the term “excited delirium” and the assertion that the absence of physical injuries guaranteed restraints did not contribute to his death. 

Excited delirium is no longer recognized as a legitimate diagnosis or cause of death by most major medical societies, including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and the National Association of Medical Examiners, as reported by KFF Health News. 

The term, while not backed by rigorous scientific study, was used for decades because it offered a simple explanation for the deaths of people on drugs or experiencing psychiatric emergencies who were restrained by police, Eric Jaeger said. Jaeger is a paramedic and lawyer who has devoted the last decade of his career to EMS education. 

“I think part of the problem in the past, if you were a coroner or medical examiner, and you were presented with Kenneth Durrah’s body, and you were asked to examine his death and figure out what happened, and you can’t find any bruises and you can’t find, for example, significant heart disease, and you need to put something down on a piece of paper to explain the cause of death, you were lucky because you could find in the literature this concept of excited delirium,” Jaeger said. “It’s this idea that people became so excited, either through methamphetamine or just by struggling [against restraints] that they effectively work themselves to death. 

“The layperson’s description of excited delirium is they became so worked up, their heart rate became so high that they essentially work themselves to death,” Jaeger said.

Body camera footage of in-custody deaths attributed to excited delirium started to poke holes in the use of the term, Jaeger said, because physicians could see what was happening to these individuals before they died. 

“They were being restrained on the ground in a way that restricted their breathing,” Jaeger said. “It’s really medical science 101 that if [I] can’t breathe effectively, and [I’m] agitated, my heart rate goes up, my blood pressure goes up, my oxygen consumption goes up.” 

Because breathing is how we compensate for having low oxygen levels, by breathing faster and more deeply, Jaeger explained it’s hard for humans to recover when restrained the wrong way, as was the case for Elijah McClain in Colorado in 2019 and George Floyd in Minnesota in 2020.

“So the medical community has, as a whole over the last five years, shifted away from the excited delirium to recognizing that most of these deaths are likely due to what’s called positional asphyxia, restraint asphyxia or compressional asphyxia. The concept being that their breathing is restricted by the restraint, or in some cases by straps, and they die due to low oxygen levels or a buildup of acid in their body called acidosis.”

Lethal restraints won’t always leave a mark, Brooks Walsh said. A supervising emergency physician who specializes in cardiology and resuscitation, Walsh helped successfully advocate for the American College of Emergency Physicians to abandon use of excited delirium.

“If someone is choked with a cord or hands, there can be marks around the neck,” Walsh explained. But in cases where “people are held down on their belly or have their breathing impaired — especially when they are highly, highly stressed metabolically — it’s more of a diffuse pressure on the body.” 

That diffuse pressure won’t necessarily leave specific bruises or abrasions, Walsh said.

In Durrah’s case, “the written record [investigators] produced, says that he came out of that [prone] position on the floor in handcuffs and was placed in the restraint chair doing fairly well,” Walsh said. 

“If you take them at their word, that this guy was in the restraint chair and talking to them . . . and fairly healthy . . . then that doesn’t fit with the description of excited delirium.” 

The decision by deputies to get Durrah out of the prone position was a good one, Jaeger said, if the restraint chair straps were properly applied. 

“It’s a device specifically designed to keep someone restrained and safe, and the problem with that argument is so too is an ambulance stretcher and yet, in multiple cases, we’ve seen people restrained on the stretcher, where the strap is pulled too tight, and they have drugs or alcohol [in their system] and they’ve died as a consequence of that strap being too tight and their breathing being restricted.”

Public access to the video could help examine Durrah’s status after being restrained on his belly and whether the restraint chair restricted his breathing in some way. 

Labeling his death “excited delirium” is an unnecessary distraction, Walsh said, that “only serves to stop any further conversation about the death, which is probably not what should be happening here based on all the questions the [investigation] raised for me.” 

Jaeger, the paramedic and attorney, is also concerned that excited delirium provides an out when more questions need to be asked. 

“To be clear,” Jaeger said, “whether you’re talking about a jail inmate that is suffering from a mental health emergency or a drug overdose, and needs to be restrained for his own safety, or you’re talking about someone we encounter on the street who’s having a psychiatric emergency or a substance use problem, those are inherently difficult and dangerous situations.” 

Jaeger’s big problem with excited delirium is that it misconstrues the danger that resulted in these individuals’ deaths. He says that puts EMS providers and law enforcement in a difficult situation.

“If you don’t understand what’s killing these people, then you don’t know how to avoid those deaths in the future,” Jaeger said. “And when those patients or individuals die, it’s of course tragic for them, but from my perspective, it’s also terrible from the standpoint of the paramedic or the police officer involved, if that death resulted in part from a misunderstanding of what was occurring.”

Drug overdose and chest pains

Toxicologist Ryan Marino sees evidence in the investigatory materials of a meth overdose that warranted immediate medical attention. 

“There’s a chance that this could have been treatable,” Marino said. There are ethical issues, however, when it comes to saying someone needed to do more, or placing blame for not providing adequate care, Marino said, because ultimately Durrah ingested the meth. 

“But just because someone knowingly overdosed on meth, doesn’t mean they deserve to die,” Marino said. 

Could Durrah’s death have been prevented? Likely, yes, Marino said, but he still has lots of questions about Durrah’s medical condition that night. 

“They got a report that there were drugs in that area of the jail . . . and then after that, he said he had chest pain, and then [EMTs] said he didn’t need to go to a hospital. Then they saw him take something and then they tied him up in a chair and he died,” Marino said. “It seems like a weird, weird timeline.”

The EMTs who initially responded to Durrah’s complaints of chest pain, “talked about the high heart rate, and that’s concerning,” Walsh said. “I would never want a paramedic who’s working with me to leave someone on the scene who had a high heart rate. It’s just too much of a red flag for a lot of badness.”

“One of the tenets of medicine is if someone is saying ‘I’m having chest pain,’ we might not think it’s a heart attack but we still do all the tests to determine whether it’s a heart attack,” Jaeger said. “And EMS cannot do [all] those tests on scene.” 

One of the detention deputies told DCI that when EMTs cleared Durrah, they said he “had a high heart rate and blood pressure, but his EKG was normal.” 

He should have gone to the hospital anyway, Walsh said, because “EKGs are not so easy to interpret. There are a lot of things that your standard line paramedic is not going to appreciate, certain patterns that are still very bad.” 

Whether Durrah was already in medical distress is worth examining, Jaeger, Walsh and Marino agreed, but the key question is: Why after watching Durrah swallow drugs, and wrestling him into the restraint chair, did they not immediately call for an ambulance again? 

Jail protocol 

Sheriff’s Capt. Kevin Theis, who oversees the jail, said that he believes jail guards who responded to the incident that night followed policy and protocol. He too was unclear why an ambulance was not called back to the jail after guards saw Durrah consume what they believed to be meth.

“That’s a good question. I can’t provide you an answer for that one,” Theis said. “Other than maybe just the ambulance had already been there, checked him out, and then they just didn’t think about it again.”

Restraint chairs are used on Campbell County jail inmates to prevent them from harming themselves or others, Theis said, and many of those incidents don’t necessarily warrant calling an ambulance.

“So maybe it just didn’t click at that time,” Theis said. “And so they didn’t think to re-call the ambulances to re-check him out again, now that they suspected that he’s ingested [suspected meth], so I can’t really give you a solid answer.”

Sheriff Scott Matheny said he would not release the jail’s policy on medical emergencies and in-custody death protocol due to potential security risks related to information about jail operations contained within the policy.

When placed into restraint chairs, Theis said, inmates are handcuffed behind their back, and sometimes also confined in leg shackles.

A strap is then locked across their shins to prevent kicking, and two seat-belt-like straps cross the inmate’s chest to hold them against the chair. The inmate’s hands may be removed from the handcuffs behind their backs and placed into cuffs locking their arms straight down to either side of the chair.

The cuffs are tested for tightness by fitting a finger between the inmate’s skin and the cuff, to ensure blood circulates.  

Three of the jail staffers involved in the incident were still in their first year of working in the jail, Theis said.

“I think all the way the events happened, it might have just thrown them off of their routine game so they just didn’t think about it,” Theis said about not calling an ambulance a second time. “But certainly, hindsight always being 20/20, it should have been done.”

No sheriff’s office workers involved in the incident were placed on administrative leave.

“Our goals are safety and security and when things go outside of that normal, daily routine and result in somebody passing away, it’s traumatizing to them,” he said. “They’re not used to having to deal with those types of situations as frequently as a patrol deputy would be.”

Drugs in jail

The investigation into drugs found in Durrah’s cell block prior to his death did not uncover who had brought them into the jail.

“There were some characters in here who were pointing fingers at each other, so I’m not sure which one got it in or how they had gotten it in,” Theis said.

Officers shook down Durrah’s block on Nov. 28, 2022, three days before his death, but that investigation began with reports of shanks in Q block, Theis said. During that search, drugs were found. 

DCI interviews with anonymous inmates produced accounts of drugs found in Q block in the days leading up to Durrah’s death. 

Although the investigation was inconclusive, Theis and Matheny said they suspect Durrah had smuggled meth into the jail himself, based on the timeline of his stint in jail corresponding with drugs reported in Q block. There were inmates who also revealed information that pointed to Durrah, Theis said. 

Durrah standoff

Durrah was arrested Nov. 22, 2022, following a standoff with Gillette police that lasted more than two hours. He died a little more than a week after his arrest.

Prior to his arrest, he had been released from prison in South Dakota for aggravated assault with a weapon and drug charges. His parole officer contacted Gillette police to revoke his parole.

Police were told at the time that Durrah was suspected of an assault in Spearfish, South Dakota, according to an affidavit of probable cause.

Durrah had ingested a significant amount of cocaine during the standoff leading up to his arrest, police reported at the time, but information released immediately after the incident and available in court records did not indicate whether meth was found.  

Not long after Durrah’s death, the sheriff’s office lobbied county commissioners for an X-ray body scanner, which cost $174,000 and was installed late last summer.  

The scanner adds an extra layer of protection against drugs entering the jail. But through its first several months in operation, it hasn’t had the high-level impact that officials hoped. 

Its presence is now thought of as a deterrence, as much as a means of catching inmates red-handed with contraband during the booking process. 

On tape

Medical experts who reviewed the DCI report and Durrah’s family were left with questions that they felt video of the events may help answer. But that video hasn’t been released.

“It wasn’t just an overdose, it was after an altercation that led up to that,” Joshua said. “They told us George Floyd was just an overdose, but we’ve seen the officer’s knee on his neck. So now I feel that video needs to be reviewed by the public, seen by the public so we can see for ourselves.”

Responses to public records requests from WyoFile and the Gillette News Record for investigatory materials did not include video from the Campbell County Detention Center. While DCI has access to the video, the agency instructed reporters to obtain a copy directly from Campbell County. A specific request for the video was filed Thursday. 

“I believe in the justice system … I just know what the report says,” Joshua said. “Until that video is shown, then we can see how they handled him. But what you know is that they failed to give him medical aid when he was in distress.”

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The Wyoming Boys’ School unlawfully subjected residents to psychological and emotional abuse, extended periods of solitary confinement and physical harm, a complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of Wyoming alleges. 

The Wyoming Department of Family Services, which oversees the juvenile detention center near Worland, says the Boys’ School provides delinquent boys ages 12 to 21 with programming that focuses on psychological and emotional development, mental health therapies and “opportunities to make changes in their lives.” But, the complaint states, “nothing could be further from the truth.”

Three former Boys’ School residents — Blaise Chivers-King, Dylan Tolar and Charles “Rees” Karn — are suing the Department of Family Services, the Wyoming Boys’ School, the superintendent of the facility and nine current and former staff members for harm they claim to have suffered and violations of their civil rights. They are seeking “damages for emotional distress, humiliation, loss of enjoyment of life, and other pain and suffering on all claims allowed by law in an amount to be determined at trial.” 

The complaint

The state of Wyoming operates the Boys’ School at a 40-acre campus just south of Worland. Boys are court-ordered into the facility’s custody for a variety of criminal offenses ranging from drug use to sexual abuse. The facility can house up to 60 boys, who on average stay for eight months. The average age of a resident is 16 years old.

Placements are “for an indefinite period of time,” the Boys’ School Superintendent Dale Weber told WyoFile in 2022. Boys are released depending on their progression through what Weber described as “cognitive behavioral restructuring.” 

While residents do attend classes at the Boys’ School, there are aspects of the facility that feel like a correctional institution. Boys are required to wear uniforms, starting with an orange jumpsuit and graduating to different colored sweatsuits to indicate their progress through the program. They are also required to have their heads shaved. 

Chivers-King, Tolar and Karn allege they left the Boys’ School more damaged and traumatized than when they arrived. Below is a summary of the harm they experienced, according to their 53-page complaint. 

Chivers-King was at Wyoming Boys’ School between April 2020 and March 2021, when he was 15 years old, and from May 2021 to May 2022, when he was 16 years old. During his court-ordered stays, staff subjected Chivers-King to “improper and painful restraints, deprivation of meaningful human contact and association, excessive force, deprivation of medication, and ruthless psychological abuse,” the complaint claims. He was in solitary confinement approximately 20 times for periods ranging from days to weeks. Chivers-King “became so distraught during his time at the Boys’ School that he would hit his head against the brick walls, and he ripped out the metal braces on his teeth and used them to cut himself,” the complaint alleges. He regularly contemplated suicide.

Dylan Tolar was 17 and 18 during his time at the Boys’ School from June 2020 through February 2021. Staff discriminated against Tolar based on physical disabilities that restricted his movement, calling him a “slow zombie” and a “clown,” the complaint states. Because staff restricted Tolar’s use of a medically necessary brace, he allegedly suffered long-term damage to his leg. Staff unlawfully excluded Tolar from educational opportunities, because of his disabilities and mental health, locking him alone in his room for hours on end, according to the complaint. 

Rees Karn did two stints at the Boys’ School between 2017 and 2021, when he was 13 to 15 years old and from 15 to 17 years old. Staff subjected Karn to long periods of solitary confinement — one time for 30 days and another time for 45 days, according to the complaint. For approximately two weeks during his 30-day stint in isolation, Karn was strapped in a restraint chair by his wrists, ankles and mid-section for up to 12 hours a day, the complaint states. During his 45 days in isolation, Karn began breaking light bulbs accessible to him in the room where he was held. His complaint alleges that staff entered the room with riot gear and tackled Karn to the ground. Defendant John Schwalbe, a dorm staff member, shoved Karn’s face into the broken glass and told him, “you want to break shit at our facility, this is what you are going to get,” according to the complaint. Staffer Thad Shaffer is also named as a defendant for allegedly breaking Karn’s wrist during the incident. 

Following Karn’s release from the Boys’ School, when he was 19 years old, he strangled his girlfriend to death and was sentenced to life in prison.

At the sentencing hearing, Karn’s public defender Diane Lozano told the court about her client’s time at the Boys’ School, “which she said took a serious toll on his mental health and may have negatively impacted his ability to improve,” the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported.

Perfect storm 

The time Tolar, Chivers-King and Karn spent at the Boys’ School overlapped with a spike in violence, the use of physical and mechanical restraints, and solitary confinement at the facility between 2019 and 2021, according to a 2022 investigation by WyoFile and the Casper Star-Tribune. 

Their complaint sheds light on allegations of troubling conditions that have been difficult for the public to investigate. Citing juvenile privacy laws, the Wyoming Department of Family Services has refused to release reports of violent incidents between staff and residents. WyoFile and the Star-Tribune relied, instead, on external police reports.

Between June 2021 and January 2022, the Washakie County Sheriff’s Office received an unprecedented number of calls to the Boys’ School, according to the publicly available police records. Incidents ranged from students breaking glass and damaging property to physical altercations. When police arrived, staff told them they were seeing more teens with a level of mental illness that they felt ill-equipped to care for. 

“In 2021, we saw more calls for service out there,” Cpt. Richard Fernandez with the Washakie County Sheriff’s Office told the news organizations for the 2022 story. “What we started seeing was the Boys’ School was actually having problems with juveniles out there being violent … getting to the point where they were asking for our assistance.”

The sheriff’s office had long served warrants to boys, helped with transports and issued burn permits for the school’s ground maintenance, but calls for assistance when things got out of hand were extremely rare, according to Fernandez and reporters’ analysis of Washakie County Sheriff’s Office records.

As to why the Boys’ School was struggling to create a safe environment, Fernandez wasn’t sure. 

“I don’t know if it’s the lack of [staff] training or if it’s the kids. I think it’s a mixture of things,” he said.  

“You’re seeing kids that can be more violent,” which Fernandez attributes to a statewide mental health crisis. “In Wyoming, there’s that lack of resources. I think that combines into a perfect storm for this kind of stuff to happen.” 

The plaintiffs attributed their abuse to inadequately trained staff. “The lack of training, in part, led to an unconstitutional policy, pattern, and practice of the punitive and inhumane use of isolation and restraints,” the complaint states.

“The Boys’ School fails to identify or recognize behavior as disability related and fails to provide reasonable accommodations, supports and services that these minors need,” the complaint alleges. “Instead, the Boys’ School responds by labeling their actions as misbehavior and sends minors, including Plaintiffs, to, or extends their time in, solitary confinement.”

After WyoFile reported on increased violence at the Boys’ School, Superintendent Weber said he required all staff to be trained on trauma-informed and trauma-responsive approaches to troubled kids. 

That training has helped, Weber said in a recent interview, but for him COVID-19 is to blame for Boys’ School’s recent struggles. Weber pointed to a decrease in the use of restraints and isolation in 2023 as evidence that pandemic restrictions were part of the problem.  

“One of the huge things was lifting the restrictions that we had placed because of COVID,” Weber said. “Getting kids out of the dorm, getting them active and getting them interacting with people.”

Without those positive outlets during the pandemic, residents acted out more, Weber explained, but for the most part, he attributed the spike in the use of restraints and seclusion to just a few kids. 

“When our numbers were the absolute worst, we had a handful of students that were not like any students we’ve ever seen before or after,” Weber said. “They were willing to become so violent and so aggressive.”

Chivers-King’s and Karn’s Boys School stays overlapped with the period of heightened violence evident in the police reports and attributed by Weber to a small number of students. 

Violence begets calls for reform 

In 1995, a Wyoming Boys’ School runaway shot and killed a sheriff’s deputy. Fremont County Sheriff’s Lt. Steve Crerar was transporting a 17-year-old from the Uinta County Jail to the Boys’ School when the boy got a hold of the officer’s gun. Crerar died from a gunshot to the head, the Casper Star-Tribune reported at the time. 

In the wake of the tragedy, then-Gov. Jim Geringer called on Wyoming to improve its response to troubled kids. “This tragedy indicates with a little more urgency the need to resolve the issues of juvenile policy and placement of juveniles,” Geringer said. 

Just months before the incident, the 1995 Legislature rejected a measure to create a permanent commission on juvenile justice that would have coordinated law enforcement, schools and social services “to assure early intervention in the lives of troubled youth,” the Casper Star-Tribune reported. 

“The state only steps in when there is a crisis situation,” Geringer said. “I would like to see the state helping communities to focus on juvenile delinquency prevention.” 

Geringer’s call for reform, which has been slow to come, was echoed in public officials’ responses to the spike in violence at the Boys’ School 25 years later. 

John Worrall, then-Washakie County Attorney, told WyoFile in 2022 that many of the residents at the Boys’ School have complex needs. He got to know their stories because when law enforcement responded to violence at the Boys’ School, Worrall also got involved. 

“Most of the young men at the Boys’ School have histories of abuse and trauma,” Worrall said. “There is the issue, because I don’t know that they’re getting everything they need. I don’t know if it’s possible — given budgetary constraints.” 

Worrall called on the state to decide that the youth are worth investing in.  

“The stakes are: We’re gonna have a whole bunch of our youth in this state totally fall between the cracks, and we may never get them back. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

In 2022, the Wyoming Legislature passed House Bill 37 – Juvenile justice data reporting requiring the Department of Family Services to standardize the collection of juvenile justice data to better inform where services are needed. The program, however, is not mandated to launch until July 2024. 

The attorneys

Tolar, who appears by and through his mother, Chivers-King and Karn are represented by ALM Law, LLC, a firm specializing in “children harmed while in the custody of child welfare systems,” as well as Rathod Mohamedbhai, LLC. 

In November 2021, attorneys with Rathod Mohamedbhai helped the family of 23-year-old Elijah McClain reach a $15 million settlement in a civil rights lawsuit brought against the city of Aurora, Colo. McClain, a Black man, died after police put him in a chokehold and paramedics injected him with ketamine. In Wyoming, the firm settled a lawsuit in 2019 against the city of Rawlins for $925,000 after two Rawlins Police officers shot and killed Colorado resident John Randall Veach in 2015.

“No human being should be subjected to solitary confinement,” Rathod Mohamedbhai-attorney Ciara Anderson said in a press release. “Blaise, Rees, and Dylan are forever changed because of the cruel treatment they endured while in Wyoming’s custody. It is astonishing that the abuses our clients suffered have been shielded from the public’s knowledge for so long. Wyoming must take a hard look at how children are being treated.” 

“The Wyoming Boys’ School was entrusted to care for these three vulnerable boys, but utterly failed to do so,” said Allison Mahoney, with ALM Law. “No child should ever endure the horrors of abuse that Rees, Blaise, and Dylan experienced, especially within a system meant to rehabilitate and support them.”

The post Boys abused at Wyoming-run juvenile facility, suit claims appeared first on WyoFile .

After an Albany County sheriff deputy shot and killed Robbie Ramirez following a November 2018 traffic stop, officials told the public the deputy’s body-worn camera came unplugged as the two men struggled in Ramirez’s driveway. 

The pulled cord cut the body camera footage at a crucial moment. Neither the public, nor the state detectives investigating whether Deputy Derek Colling was justified in killing Ramirez, ever saw what Colling did in the crucial seconds before he fired two fatal shots into Ramirez’s back.

Five years later, what happened to Colling’s camera and other video evidence in the case remains in dispute, despite a $1.2 million settlement between Albany County and Ramirez’s family. It is one of many unanswered questions that still linger half a decade after the killing that shook Laramie and sparked protests and policy reform efforts for years afterward.

In a fresh clash this week, lawyers for the family countered a claim by current Albany County Sheriff Aaron Appelhans that all parties to the settlement had agreed there was no “legal basis for evidence tampering” with Colling’s body camera footage or the dashboard camera on his patrol car.  

In May 2022, Albany County settled the case roughly two months after attorneys representing Ramirez’s mother, Debra Hinkel, filed a lengthy motion accusing both Colling and other sheriff’s officials of tampering with the body and dash camera footage after the killing. 

In violation of the department’s own five-year records-retention policy, a sheriff’s lieutenant deleted the original body and dash camera videos in December 2019, according to that filing. Versions of the video that were presented to the public remain online. 

The county maintains the original videos were deleted as part of routine maintenance and updates, and that the lieutenant had not been notified litigation was pending. The family, however, says he admitted to being aware of a possible future lawsuit, which was widely discussed within Albany County at the time.

Though attorneys for the county strenuously denied tampering accusations, the question never got its day in court.

Federal Judge Nancy Freudenthal had scheduled a hearing on the allegations of evidence tampering for May 3, 2022, court records indicate. The parties reached a settlement agreement on May 2, and the hearing was canceled — ending litigation that had gone on for a year and eight months. 

Earlier this January, after continued Wyoming Public Records Act requests from WyoFile and its attorney for the document, Appelhans released the previously confidential agreement dictating the terms of the settlement. But in a press release announcing that release, he asserted that all parties to the settlement agreed there was no legal basis for the evidence tampering claim.

Hinkel’s attorneys responded this week with a press release of their own. They rejected that claim, while also calling on Albany County to allow the release of other evidence from the case that could allow “all of Wyoming law enforcement to learn from this tragic story.” 

Considerable evidence uncovered during the prosecution of the civil suit remains sealed because of a court order sought by Albany County, Hinkel’s attorneys wrote in their statement. After the shooting, then-Albany County District Attorney Peggy Trent convened a grand jury, proceedings of which are usually held in secret. What she presented to those jurors has never been made public, but led the grand jury to conclude Colling should not face any criminal charges for the shooting — his third fatal use of force in uniform. (He was not charged criminally in the other two instances.)

“The protected evidence would be critical in assessing the evidentiary integrity and fairness of both the grand jury proceedings and the truth behind the shooting death of her son,” Hinkel’s attorneys wrote.

Over 25 documents are labeled non-public or sealed, according to WyoFile’s review of the court records. Several refer to Colling’s psychiatric records. 

Both public scrutiny and the legal case have focused on whether former Albany County Sheriff Dave O’Malley erred in choosing to hire Colling after he was fired by a metropolitan police department. The Las Vegas Police Department fired Colling following an inquiry into allegations that he beat and arrested a videographer for filming police from his driveway. Video of the incident went viral. The episode followed another controversial killing in which Colling was the sole shooter.

O’Malley hired Colling into the sheriff’s department a year later.

While Colling left the sheriff’s department in 2021, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission has been considering whether to disqualify him from future law enforcement work in Wyoming. However, the thorough review necessary to decertify an officer has been limited by Albany County’s refusal to share Colling’s personnel records, according to Director Chris Walsh. The Legislature will consider a bill during the upcoming session to grant POST access to law enforcement personnel files for investigations. 

Altered footage?

According to Hinkel’s attorneys, Colling’s camera may not have come unplugged the day he killed Ramirez in 2018. Instead, they contend he or his supervisors deleted five seconds of the body-worn camera footage before he handed it over to detectives from the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation — a state agency that typically investigates police officer killings. 

Those five seconds “likely would have shown Ramirez badly wounded and face down on the ground when Colling killed him with two shots to the back,” the attorneys wrote. 

They argue Colling’s camera was in “offline mode” during the shooting, a status that allows videos to be altered before they’re uploaded to an evidence storage system. Colling had plenty of time in which he could have deleted the footage himself, because evidence logs indicate he held on to his camera for three hours and 19 minutes after the shooting. 

After he handed the camera off, agents with the Division of Criminal Investigation worked with the sheriff’s office to obtain the footage from the camera. That’s not unusual for DCI agents investigating in-custody deaths, agency director Ronnie Jones told WyoFile, because they rely on local law enforcement agencies with access to the camera’s proprietary technology to download the video. It can take multiple hours, and even days, for DCI to obtain footage depending on the circumstances of the case, Jones said.  

Before finally handing the footage over to DCI, then-Undersheriff Josh DeBree took the camera into his office alone, according to one of the state agent’s testimony. 

Debree has since left the sheriff’s office, along with Colling. Both men are now listed as brokers for the same Laramie real estate firm. 

In an April 2022 filing, attorneys for the county rejected all the plaintiff’s evidence-tampering arguments, labeling them “allegations of conjecture, wild speculation and at times, outrageous.” 

The alleged tampering was both “physically and technologically impossible,” they wrote. Among their witnesses is an engineer for the body-worn camera maker, Axon. 

In an email to WyoFile this week, Appelhans defended his department’s handling of the video evidence in the shooting, citing the county’s court filings. His deputies are certainly unable to edit their body camera footage with today’s technology, he said. 

“All video is automatically uploaded to a secure server,” Appelhans wrote.
“The software used makes it impossible to alter the footage recorded.” 

But the Axon Body cameras used today — Axon Body 4 — have evolved from the Axon Flex camera Colling wore. In their motions, attorneys for both sides cited Axon’s manual to support their case for the possibility of tampering, or the lack of it. 

What the judge said

In June 2022, a month after the settlement agreement, Freudenthal dismissed the plaintiff’s motion. She did so with a one-paragraph order that offered none of a judge’s usual analysis of the arguments. 

“Having considered the parties’ arguments, reviewed the record, and being otherwise fully advised on the premises, the Court finds there is no legal basis for evidence tampering,” she wrote. 

That decision appears somewhat preordained by the settlement agreement. Outside the usual language dismissing further liabilities, both parties agreed to two specific provisions accompanying the $1.2 million payment to Ramirez’s relatives. One was that the Albany County Sheriff’s Office would commit to “reasonable efforts” to train its officers in crisis intervention techniques — better equipping them to deal with people with mental illness, like Ramirez. 

That work is underway, according to the Spence Law Firm attorneys representing Hinkel. “The progress appears real,” they wrote. 

The other provision required Freudenthal to publish an order denying the motion on evidence tampering. 

Specifically, the settlement agreement required her to state she has “considered the parties’ arguments, reviewed the record, and being otherwise fully advised in the premises, and she finds that there is no legal basis for evidence tampering.” 

That is very nearly the exact language that appeared in Freudenthal’s brief order. 

“No legal basis for evidence tampering” may sound like Albany County has been cleared of any wrongdoing, but legal experts told WyoFile that’s not necessarily the case. One could read that to mean Freudenthal decided the evidence tampering allegations did not meet the high legal bar for what Hinkel sought, which is for the judge to decide the case in her favor. 

Or Freudenthal may have decided that since a settlement was reached, there was no legal basis to proceed with the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment. In other words, the judge was simply tying up loose ends by deeming the issue moot. Since the settlement agreement required her to find there was no legal basis, she would have bucked all parties in the case by doing otherwise.

The post Mother disputes sheriff’s denial of evidence tampering in fatal shooting appeared first on WyoFile .