Man Agrees to Plea DeaI in Wyoming Wolf Torture Case

UPDATE Feb 27, 2026 12:58 PM CST

A Wyoming man who allegedly hit a wolf with a snowmobile, taped the wounded animal's mouth shut, and showed it off in a rural bar before killing it has agreed to a plea deal that would spare him from going to trial and potentially prison, the AP reports. Cody Roberts would instead pay a $1,000 fine and serve 18 months of probation under the deal reached with Sublette County prosecutors last week and filed in court Wednesday, according to court documents.

• The alleged animal abuse happened in February 2024 in Daniel, a town of about 150 people some 50 miles south of Jackson. Condemnation of the alleged abuse and scrutiny of Wyoming's laws followed.
• After being indicted on a single count of animal cruelty by a rare Wyoming grand jury last summer, Roberts faced up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine if convicted. Trial was set for March 9. Under the proposed plea deal he signed Feb. 17, Roberts would plead guilty or no contest to one count of felony animal cruelty, according to court documents. The proposed plea agreement would prohibit Roberts from drinking alcohol, going into a bar or liquor store, and hunting or fishing while on probation.

Aug 22, 2025 2:20 PM CDT

A Wyoming man who allegedly hit a wolf with a snowmobile, taped the wounded animal's mouth shut, and showed it off in a rural bar before killing it has been indicted on an animal cruelty charge by a grand jury, nearly a year and a half after the incident. Cody Roberts last year paid a $250 fine for illegal possession of wildlife but avoided more serious charges as investigators struggled to find cooperative witnesses, per the AP.

• Wyoming law gives wide leeway for people to kill wolves and other predators by a variety of means in the vast majority of the state. Even so, the 12-person grand jury found enough evidence over the past two weeks to support the charge of felony animal cruelty, Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich said in a statement Wednesday.

• Widely circulated photos showed a man identified as Roberts posing with the wolf, its mouth bound with tape, on Feb. 29, 2024, in a bar near Daniel, a town of about 150 people a little more than an hour south of Jackson. Video clips showed the same animal lying on a floor, alive but barely moving.
• The light punishment against Roberts led to calls for a Wyoming tourism boycott, to little apparent effect: Yellowstone National Park had its second-busiest year on record in 2024, up more than 5% from 2023.
• Grand juries in Wyoming are rare. The last one to get significant attention, in 2019, found that a sheriff's deputy didn't commit involuntary manslaughter by killing an unarmed man after a traffic stop.
• Government-sponsored poisoning, trapping, and bounty hunting all but wiped out wolves in the lower 48 states in the 19th and 20th centuries. Starting in the 1990s, a reintroduction program brought them back to Yellowstone and central Idaho, and their numbers have rebounded. Though wolves remain listed as a federally endangered or threatened species in most of the country, they have no such protection in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, where they can be hunted and trapped.