Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
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CASPER — The ACLU last week asked Wyoming officials to call on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to temporarily cease raids used to deport undocumented immigrants. The request, made in an open letter addressed to Gov. Mark Gordon and prison officials, comes as part of what the Wyoming chapter of the civil liberties organization calls a necessary response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has spread rapidly in jails and prisons elsewhere but has not yet been linked to a jail or prison facility in Wyoming. An ACLU spokeswoman said by phone W...
CASPER — A Casper pharmacy will pay $1 million to settle allegations of violations of federal drug law, the federal government said Tuesday afternoon. According to a news release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming, federal investigators began looking into the Osco Pharmacy located in the CY Avenue location of Albertsons grocery store in connection with a Casper doctor who was eventually convicted of running a pill mill. The doctor, Shakeel Kahn, is now serving a quarter-century prison sentence. The pharmacy and...
LARAMIE – Ambiguous language in a 2018 law means the Wyoming Supreme Court might have to review every criminal case that involves certain self-defense provisions, a supreme court justice said Thursday. Justice Keith Kautz made the statement in an auditorium at the University of Wyoming College of Law, where the court heard arguments in the appeal of a first-degree murder case originating in Casper. A Natrona County District Court judge earlier this year dismissed the case before trial, ruling that a “stand your ground” law only a month old at t...
CASPER — Lawyers for a Casper man whom a local judge found immune from a murder prosecution on the basis of a new law filed arguments last week with the state’s highest court, largely outlining the issues to be decided following oral arguments this fall. The filings stem from the first judicial test of a new Wyoming law that institutes “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” provisions. Earlier this year, a Natrona County judge dismissed a first-degree murder case and the defendant went free, despite his lawyer’s acknowledgement that he shot...
CASPER — A national group of victims of priest abuse called on the Catholic Church on Monday to send former Wyoming Bishop Joseph Hart to a friary in rural Kansas, which would mean expelling him from his diocese-owned home in Cheyenne. “When an abuser is suspended or gets older, he’s not magically cured, so even after ousting or even defrocking sex off ending clerics, the Catholic hierarchy has a duty to safeguard others from them,” the group, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, said Monday in a statement. Hart has been accused...
CASPER — Wyoming lawmakers are weighing legislative action to help resolve a shortage of public defenders that has forced judges to call on private attorneys. Meanwhile, lawyers have begun outlining arguments before the state’s highest court that could at least partially determine the issue. The Judiciary Committee decided last week to consider eliminating jail penalties for certain traffic offenses and to research penning a law that more clearly guides public defender appointments. The actions came in response to what the State Public Def...
CASPER — Government lawyers on Monday outlined the arguments they will use in asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to reverse a Natrona County judge’s decision — made on the basis of a new self-defense law — to dismiss a first-degree murder case against a Casper man. The filing is the latest in a case expected to clarify a broadly expanded self-defense law under which a judge dismissed the case against Jason John, the Casper man who last summer from inside his trailer shot and killed another man. The law, passed by state legislators in 2018, p...
CASPER — The Wyoming Supreme Court disbarred a former Torrington municipal judge after a lawyers’ disciplinary board found he’d slept with a client of his private law practice and lied to investigators about it. The state’s highest court ordered Gregory L. Knudsen’s law license defunct on July 15th in its Wednesday ruling. A disciplinary board filing attached to the ruling also states the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation in April searched Knudsen’s home and law office. The reason for the searches was unclear — warrants and supportin...
CASPER — A man accused of kidnapping a child from a south Casper apartment complex on Wednesday — and then eluding police for 24 hours — now faces up to life in prison. Prosecutors on Friday afternoon filed three felony charges against Joshua Hicks, 32, who, authorities have said, abducted a young girl on Wednesday morning from a lawn near Southwest Wyoming Boulevard and sexually abused her. He then dropped her in the area of the apartment building and left in a truck, according to a series of news releases police issued in connecting to the c...
CASPER — As Beau Brindley paged through a jury verdict form, five attorneys crowding around him craned their necks and leaned over his shoulders. Brindley returned the form to Judge Alan Johnson and walked back to a defense table in Casper’s federal courthouse. He shared whispers with his client, Dr. Shakeel Kahn, before Johnson read the form aloud to the courtroom. By the time Johnson completed his recitation, Kahn had been found guilty of all 21 felonies he faced, including an enhancement holding him responsible for the 2015 death of an Ari...
CASPER — The mother of a man shot and killed by Casper police last year filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court Monday on the anniversary of his death. The lawsuit was filed Monday by Todd Hambrick, who represents the family of Douglas Oneyear. It names the city of Casper, the Casper Police Department, the Wyoming Law Enforcement Academy and officers Jonathan Schlager and Cody Meyers as defendants. Schlager shot and killed Oneyear in February 2018 after he and Meyers encountered the man on 15th Street near Wyoming Boulevard on the city...
CASPER — In the first judicial test of Wyoming’s new “stand your ground” law, a Natrona County judge on Friday dismissed a first-degree murder case, but implored prosecutors to appeal to the state’s highest court. Judge Catherine Wilking handed down the ruling following a two-and-a-half-hour hearing, the bulk of which she ruled was required by the new law. Under the law, a person who is attacked at a place where he is legally allowed to be has no obligation to retreat, so long as he is not the initial aggressor or breaking any laws. A person...
CASPER — The Badger Creek Fire has burned for more than a month along the Colorado border, consuming more than 21,000 acres in the process. Six hours north, the Terek Fire, more than twice the size of its southern counterpart, has burned for about a week. The fires, which were almost completely contained Friday, will likely not be the last to ignite in Wyoming this summer. This summer shouldn’t bring with it an inferno, however. Authorities are predicting a relatively mild fire season in a state historically prone to bouts of burning wil...
CASPER — The officer wounded in a shootout with a suspect in east Casper on Sunday was struck by five or more bullets and remains in critical condition, the Casper Police Department said Monday. The officer, whom police did not name, was taken to Wyoming Medical Center, where he received “immediate, life-saving treatment for his injuries,” the department said in a statement released Monday morning. That officer remains in critical condition and had received multiple blood transfusions by Monday afternoon. “The extent of the Officer’s injuries a...