Traveling CNA found guilty of criminally negligent homicide in death of Legacy resident

GILLETTE (WNE) — A jury declined to charge a Certified Nursing Assistant, 57-year-old Bernard David Hale, with involuntary manslaughter for the death of Judith Duvall, a resident at the Legacy Living and Rehabilitation Center.

Instead, the jury opted last week to downgrade Hale’s charges to criminally negligent homicide, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, a $2,000 fine or both. The manslaughter charge would have been punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The jury released its verdict Thursday night.

Hale was the primary CNA responsible for overseeing one of two memory care units at the Legacy the night Duvall, 88, walked out of the facility and into a fenced-in exterior courtyard, where she fell and was unable to get up. Hale deactivated the alarm Duvall had triggered by punching in a door code, and Duvall was later found dead due to hypothermia.

During his testimony Wednesday, Hale said he’d never experienced anything during several decades of working in similar facilities like the incident with Duvall.

“I’ve never been through something like that before, and it messed with me,” Hale said. “It really messed with me.”

Criminally negligent homicide indicates a person caused the death of another person — as opposed to “killed,” which would constitute involuntary manslaughter — through a “gross deviation from the standard of care that a reasonable person would exercise,” according to Wyoming statute.

This story was published on Oct. 24, 2025.