Cody Roberts, man accused of tormenting wolf, indicted for felony animal cruelty
JACKSON — Cody Roberts, the Daniel man publicly accused of tormenting a wolf in the Green River Bar, has been indicted by a Sublette County grand jury.
In a letter released Wednesday, Sublette County Attorney Clayton Melinkovich announced that Roberts is being charged with felony animal cruelty.
The charge is punishable by up to two years in prison, a fine of $5,000, or both.
The Jackson Hole Daily was unable to reach Roberts for comment before press time Wednesday. He has not responded to multiple requests for comment since his alleged actions became public in a series of news articles in 2024.
Earlier in August, WyoFile reported that a grand jury, requested by Melinkovich, had convened in Sublette County to decide whether to charge Roberts. Grand juries are a powerful but rarely used tool that allows prosecutors both to keep the identity of the accused private and also to subpoena witnesses, requiring them to talk with authorities before someone is charged.
In a small community like Sublette County, which has roughly 9,000 residents, subpoena power can help prosecutors acquire testimony from witnesses who don’t want to tarnish their reputation.
The notice distributed Wednesday by the Sublette County and Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said the grand jury was requested in June, and sworn in the 9th Judicial District, which includes Sublette, Lincoln and Teton counties. The 12-member jury convened for “evidentiary sessions” in the second and third weeks of August and, after “receiving evidence” and “deliberation,” voted to issue a “true bill,” the procedural step that makes an indictment official.
An indictment is essentially a specific type of charge levied by a grand jury and, with that in hand, prosecutors should be able to move a case against Roberts forward.
Wyoming Game and Fish charged Roberts only with possessing live wildlife, a misdemeanor, when it contacted him in 2024 after the incident. He was fined $250.
Beyond two short videos showing a wolf in the Green River Bar, and a citation that game wardens issued Roberts, Game and Fish has never confirmed the details of how Roberts acquired the wolf that he transported into the Green River Bar.
But Roberts has been publicly accused of hitting the wolf with a snowmobile — a practice known as wolf or coyote “whacking” — bringing it into the bar, parading it around, and then killing it out back. The Game and Fish videos show the wolf muzzled and leashed on the bar’s floor.
Game and Fish, then directed by Brian Nesvik, now the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, didn’t pursue steeper penalties.
State wildlife officials also said animal cruelty laws don’t apply to animals the state considers predators, including wolves, which receive that designation everywhere but the northwest corner of the state, where they’re regulated as big game.
While Gov. Mark Gordon signed a bill this year that makes tormenting wildlife, including predators, a felony, the indictment is significant because Melinkovich was one of the lone public officials who disagreed with Game and Fish’s stance in 2024, before the bill was passed. He said animal cruelty laws did, in fact, apply to predators.
The grand jury apparently agreed with that assessment.
The penalties the Sublette County Attorney’s office is now pursuing appear to exceed those established by the new law, which makes first offense animal cruelty a misdemeanor punishable with up to six months in jail, a fine of up to $5,000, and a revocation of hunting and fishing privileges.
This story was published on August 21, 2025.