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[{"type":"text","text":"Now let's all watch a dog get dressed up in a bee costume..."}]

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Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Saturday, April 13, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Now let's all watch a dog get dressed up in a bee costume...

Daily Smile: Saturday, April 13, 2024

 Now let's all watch a dog get dressed up in a bee costume...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Crime & Courts

Courts

The Wyoming Supreme Court has rejected all the appeal arguments that a former award-winning Casper foster dad made in an attempt to overturn his 128-to-178-year sentence for sexually abusing children.

Steven Marler, 51, was not deprived of a fair trial in April 2025, says a unanimous majority opinion by Wyoming Supreme Court Justice Robert Jarosh issued Friday.

Natrona County District Court Judge Kerri Johnson sentenced Marler last August, four months after an 11-day jury trial in which many of his foster and adopted children 

Testimony ranged from actual crime evidence, such as sexual penetration and touching of the female children in Marler’s care, to tangential evidence the judge allowed after a special analysis. 

That included claims that Marler required the girls to give him “daddy tax” reciprocal massages, that he showered with at least one of the girls, that he subjected the children to intense discipline, and that the children were often deprived of food.

The jury convicted him of sexually abusing two adopted daughters as well as physically abusing them and four other children in his care.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"At Trial"}]

At trial, a former foster daughter of Marler described how he sexually assaulted her in the family’s master bedroom, and one of his adopted sons described hearing “moaning” from the girls’ bedroom.

Along with the allegations of sexual abuse, the adopted son also told the jury about being kicked off a metal roof of the family’s Casper Mountain home by his father for “moving too slow” after clearing snow.

One foster daughter told Natrona County Assistant District Attorney Brandon Rosty that she was in the home with her older sisters between the spring of 2013 and 2014. She described the day when Marler brought her into his bedroom and placed her on the bed.

She testified that he asked her to take off her clothes, and she refused.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Once I would not, Steve removed my pants,” she said. "}]

Marler also removed her underclothes and then sexually assaulted her with his fingers before removing his own clothing and sexually assaulted her again, she said.

“I was laying on my back on the bed and he was standing up,” the girl said, adding that the incident left her in a lot of pain.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The ‘Other Acts’ Testimony"}]

In his appeal, Marler argued that Johnson abused her discretion by letting multiple witnesses testify to “other acts” — that is, evidence that doesn’t go directly to charged crimes. 

He also argued that Johnson abused her discretion by not letting his attorney question one of the daughters about a time she lied to a jail deputy, while also detailing abuse by Marler to an investigator.

Marler further argued that Johnson abused her discretion by not letting his attorney play a full interview between him and an investigator, of which the prosecutor had played a portion; that the prosecutor was wrong to question one of the victims about her father’s suicide; and that all these alleged errors combined deprived him of a fair trial.

[{"type":"text","text":"The high court agreed with none of that."}]

“Other acts” evidence can only enter a trial after a judge finds fair reasons for it, the high court noted.

One of the state’s witnesses described grooming as a “constellation of tactics that perpetrators will use to gradually, incrementally have sexual contact, sexual activity with a child,” and said grooming can also include efforts to compel silence.

Johnson chose to admit the grooming evidence after an analysis involving four factors. The factors are whether the evidence is being offered for a proper purpose, it’s relevant, its probative value outweighs its potential to prejudice the defendant, and the trial court must warn the jury about the evidence’s limited purpose upon request.

Johnson read the disclaimer about the evidence multiple times during trial, but not before every daughter’s and son’s testimony.

That didn’t amount to an abuse of discretion, the high court concluded. She had read it multiple times.

“There is simply no reasonable probability that repeating the same limiting instruction more often would have altered the verdict,” says Jarosh’s opinion.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Hand It Over Then"}]

As for the incident in which Johnson limited the prosecutor from asking one of the girls about lying to a jail deputy — she’d claimed to have a child — Johnson also didn’t abuse her discretion there, the Supreme Court ruled.

Defendants have a constitutional right to confront witnesses and to present a complete defense. But judges can still rein in that confrontation to exclude evidence that is only marginally relevant.

This evidence was relevant because the jury had already heard ample testimony about whether the girl was credible, says the opinion.

Johnson also didn’t abuse her discretion by preventing Marler’s attorney from playing the remainder of a recording of Marler’s police interview, after the prosecutor had used a portion of that interview to challenge Marler’s credibility.

Marler’s attorney hadn’t provided the full recording to Johnson ahead of that mid-trial dispute, the high court noted.

“Without an offer of proof, we will not speculate about what the evidence would have shown,” the opinion says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Prosecutor Did OK Here"}]

The prosecutor did not commit misconduct by asking one of the girls about her father’s suicide, says the opinion.

That line of questioning bore upon one of Marler’s statements, that he had laid down with the girl to pray with her about her father’s suicide. 

The girl said that “praying was a constant thing in the household for everybody,” but Marler never prayed with her in her bedroom, court documents say.

Since all these alleged errors weren’t actually constitutional errors, Marler doesn’t get a new trial over what he’d called a pileup of errors.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"More Testimony"}]

In trial testimony, adopted sons of the Marlers testified that the girls were clearly Marler’s “favorites,” and they saw him go into the girls’ bedroom. 

There also were times that the girls, two in particular, were taken to the master bedroom when Steven Marler’s wife, Kristen, was away from the home during evening hours or on visits to Las Vegas.

An adopted son who has since changed his name testified that one girl would get treats the next day after spending time with Marler and that there were times he could hear “moaning, crying, talking” coming from the girls’ room when Marler was inside with them.

He also told the court he was young when he was placed in the home and adopted a couple of years later.

Another brother testified about the Marlers buying sacks of potatoes and being given a potato for breakfast, one with meat for lunch and another for supper. 

He said they had 15 minutes to eat or they would be punished either by spankings or “circuits,” which involved doing 100 pushups, sit-ups, mountain climbers and jumping jacks. 

Spankings could be with a piece of firewood, piece of rubber mud flap or a belt, he said.

He described doing chores that included cleaning the house, getting firewood and shoveling snow in the winter from the sidewalks and roofs of the home and garage. He said a tractor with a bucket would be put up against the metal roof and certain children and Marler would climb on the roof to clear the snow.

The boy described an incident shoveling snow on the roof between 2019 and 2021. He said Marler was on the roof to break the ice and he was shoveling snow. They had finished and he was moving slowly to get off the roof.

He said Marler told him: “Move faster, you’re going too f***ing slow.” When the boy said he was worried about slipping, Marler kicked him in the back.

“I slid down the roof and there was jagged metal on the roof and sliced my left leg,” he said, adding he still has a scar and that Marler gave him some antiseptic and gauze for the wound.

Another adopted son who’s now an adult took the stand and confirmed the incident, stating he was “right behind him” and saw Marler kick him off the roof.

Seven Marler Marler and His Attorneys 4 10 25 copy 87 25

<title>Supreme Court Upholds 128-178-Year Sentence For Sexually Abusive Casper Foster Dad | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The Wyoming Supreme Court on Friday rejected all the appeals a former award-winning Casper foster dad made to overturn his 128-to-178-year sentence for sexually abusing children. Multiple former foster and adopted children testified against him at trial.

Supreme Court Upholds 128-178-Year Sentence For Sexually Abusive Casper Foster Dad

Julie Mankin

Wyoming Life

Entertainment

 annual “Daddy of ’em All” Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo that began Friday looks far different to some usual contestants.

Even the cowboy who could “still make Cheyenne” in George Strait’s 1996 country hit might not be aiming his truck “toward that Wyoming line” today.

That’s because entries at the Cheyenne Frontier Days Rodeo will be down by about 70%.

Morning slack competition, which drew hundreds of athletes in each timed event and made Cheyenne the world’s largest pro rodeo, has been eliminated.

Slack is for overflow competitors for events that draw dozens more entries than spots in the main performances. Slack usually happens early mornings or late nights, typically for timed events.

This week, just 72 of the sport’s winningest contestants (and champions of nine rodeos as far away as Oregon and Arizona) were invited to enter each event.

Before this year’s rodeo, it wasn’t unusual to see 200 or more contestants in timed slack event rounds.

The change was announced last winter as a way to help ease horse-trailer-parking congestion and create a more manageable schedule for the event’s thousands of volunteers.

Also announced was the Frontier Days Committee’s purse increase, bringing total prize money at the 10-day rodeo to $960,000.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Breaking Point"}]

Still, area barrel racer Kate Spaur Devore recently went viral with a simple social media post: “Goodbye to the Daddy.”

“Cheyenne closed the door on many of the very contestants who helped build its reputation as the ‘Daddy of ’em All,’” Devore said.

CFD is typically the third-richest rodeo in the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s regular season, behind Houston and San Antonio.

Because rodeo is a pay-to-play sport, accessibility to Cheyenne’s fat paychecks was known to provide the confidence and capital to launch a newcomer’s career, if not save a veteran’s entire season.

Cheyenne Frontier Days CEO Tom Hirsig said he understands eliminating slack competition is a huge change for the 130-year-old rodeo, but the world’s largest outdoor rodeo had simply outgrown its ability to handle the hundreds of slack riders.

“People are upset they’re not able to come,” he said. “But we simply have no room for those big rigs anymore.”

He also mentioned that rodeos have to absorb stock charges without help from contestants. The cost of fresh cattle today is sky-high and can’t be recaptured.

It’s a price that’s multiplied for every additional bovine chased down Cheyenne’s long arena.

Devore referenced the same sandy arena’s starring role in Garth Brooks’ 1995 hit song “The Beaches of Cheyenne” when she wrote, “So many dreamed of dancing on that stage. We came in droves, paid our entry fees, and took our chances.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Every year seemed to produce another Cinderella story.”"}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Slack To Hall Of Fame"}]

Ote Berry, for instance, was 22 in July 1985 and about to go to work in a hay field when he won the bulldogging event in Cheyenne, which propelled the South Dakota native into his first National Finals Rodeo and a Hall-of-Fame career as one of the greatest of all time.

Eliminating the slack competitions at CFD is a fundamental change for the historic rodeo, many competitors say.

“Honestly, there is no more Daddy of ’em All,” said veteran barrel racer Kelly Yates, whose late father was a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) director for eight years.

Yates turned pro at age 13 and has made as many competitive runs in Cheyenne as any contestant.

Along with her brother and father, both Hall-of-Fame ropers, she’s competed at the NFR.

But lately, she only competes at the finals of the PRCA’s Mountain States Circuit, which includes Cheyenne Frontier Days.

This year, Yates earned a coveted berth into Frontier Days via her 2025 circuit earnings. But she said it “won’t do her any good.”

Now that Cheyenne’s entries are so limited, its paychecks aren’t counted toward circuit standings, but only world standings.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sudden Death"}]

The limit on entries comes seven years after another major shift was made to CFD’s competition format that had some athletes changing the famed rodeo’s nickname to “The Stepdaddy.”

Traditionally, each of 12 rodeo athletes advanced to Cheyenne’s lucrative finals based on his or her two combined scores or times.

In 2019, the rodeo switched to sudden-death tournament brackets as a way to make changing weather conditions fairer for contestants and make results easier for spectators to follow.

[{"type":"text","text":"Its popularity has been questionable."}]

Contestants now make Cheyenne’s finals based on money earned, with the losers able to take a mulligan and advance via the Wild Card Round. That means cowboys can make Cheyenne’s esteemed short round despite an earlier no-score or no-time.

Yates said she and her family members noticed fewer spectators in the grandstands when they competed last year. This year, there will be a lot fewer contestants.

Finally, the new format makes it impossible for athletes to trade at Cheyenne when they have scheduling conflicts at the simultaneous California Rodeo Salinas.

Thus, some pros are skipping Cheyenne for Salinas, which still accepts hundreds of competitors and offers a traditional competition format at Big Week.

“There’s no Daddy,” Yates said. “There’s just a Cheyenne rodeo, limited.”

Julie Mankin can be reached at: jm@outwestmedia.net

Cheyenne Frontier Cowboy Lifestyle Network 7 18 26

<title>Some Riders Say Cheyenne Frontier Days Isn't The Same After Eliminating Slack | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For the first time in more than a century, Cheyenne Frontier Days won’t have slack competition, which is for overflow competitors. Although some are saddened by the move, the rodeo says it has outgrown its ability to handle the hundreds of extra riders.

Some Riders Say Cheyenne Frontier Days Isn't The Same After Eliminating Slack

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Around Wyoming

Douglas photographer Mark Panasuk enjoys transforming a dark scene into something beautiful.

He’s always on the lookout for another interesting setting, and when he found an abandoned stone ranch house north of Lost Springs, Wyoming, he knew he had something special.

Unlike the famous line from poet Dylan Thomas, he portrayed the property as going “gentle into that good night.”

Digging into its history, Panasuk became even more enamored with capturing the stone walls and grounds with the Milky Way above it because it once was home to one of the most successful Back ranchers in the West — Jim Edwards.

“It was kind of a unique house in that it was big house, two story, out in the prairie here in eastern Wyoming,” Panasuk said. “It had several buildings … and he was really inventive because he put in that water tower.”

The tower was built with an opening that appeared to allow a space for a fire that would keep the water from freezing in the winter. 

The house had a bathroom with toilet, shower, and the property also featured a stone garage.

There is evidence of several other outbuildings that once were around it. Several accounts of the property state that Edwards was the first in the area to have indoor bathroom facilities.

Panasuk got permission from the current landowner to photograph the house and grounds, and the result shows the Milky Way like an arch above it framing the property.

He said he put a light inside the house, which has lost its windows, because he thought it made a better piece of art. 

Creating the final image required a combination of 35 photos and three-minute exposures to fully reveal the Milky Way.

He used a computer program to stitch the digital images together to make it one.

Panasuk said he spoke with some of the ranchers around the property and learned that a father or grandfather knew Edwards, who made a name for himself well beyond Wyoming.

Turns out that Edwards is a featured name at the Homestead National Historic Park in Beatrice, Nebraska, and Ebony Magazine once profiled him in its March 1949 issue that had Billy Eckstein on the cover. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Magazine Profile"}]

The profile was titled “The Last Days of Jim Edwards” and characterized him as a “legend” in Wyoming and a name that would remembered well beyond his death.

A history of Edwards written for the Black Past website says he was “one of the most successful African American homesteaders in the state of Wyoming.”

And “Pages From Converse County’s Past” compiled in the 1980s revealed that he was commonly known as “(N-word) Jim.”

But that word did not stop Edwards from becoming a successful rancher and business man. His coming and goings had fairly frequent mentions in the social columns of the local rural newspapers.

The Black Past account of Edwards' life says that he was born on Feb. 14, 1874, and arrived in Wyoming in 1900 with his father and a group of Italian miners responding to newspaper ads about work in a Lusk coal mine.

The miners drove Edwards out, and he walked to Lusk and found work on the Wilson Brother’s Running Water Ranch. 

Over the next 14 years, he rose to the rank of foreman and was a good sheepman, cowboy and horse trainer.

In his final years at the ranch, a dispute with the Wilson brothers led to a lawsuit that Edwards won in 1923, giving him $3,000 in back wages plus interest. The Wyoming Supreme Court increased it to $4,000.

The Lusk Free Lance on Nov. 1, 1923, reported that the dispute had been over an accounting of his share of sheep as well as his wages.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"1913 Homestead"}]

Meanwhile in 1913, the Wilsons helped him homestead acreage on Harney Creek. 

Edwards recruited other blacks to homestead on land around him, and he eventually bought their properties.

"Converse County's Past" states that Edwards married Lethel Dawson in 1914 in Denver, and that her parents cooked on a river boat on the Mississippi River

When her father contracted tuberculosis, they moved to Denver for his health.

A story looking back on Lost Springs in the Casper Star-Tribune on April 6, 1974, reports that Lethel’s father was a full-blooded Indian and her mother black. 

After her marriage to Edwards, she traveled to Denver from time to time to sing on radio stations.

The Lusk Standard newspaper on Sept. 12, 1919, reported that “Mrs. Jim Edwards” had just become the “happy” owner of a new piano.

“Now, we’ll have some jazz,” the editor wrote.

In the Ebony Magazine story a few years after his wife’s death, Edwards was still in charge of his 14,000-acre Sixteen-Bar-One Ranch. 

He had named it the Sixteen-Bar-One because it represented the ratio of white ranchers to black ones.

Edwards told the reporter that when he first arrived in Wyoming and then later set up his homestead, gunplay with neighboring ranchers and would-be outlaws was not uncommon. He was tested.

“No man will ever run Jim Edwards off of his land,” Edwards told the magazine. “Let ’em know right away that you’re going to fight for what you own. Just because a man’s colored is no reason for people to think he’s a coward.”

That philosophy likely was part of the reason for a story in the Niobrara County News on Dec. 3, 1914, when Edwards still served as herder for the Wilson Brothers and had a “mix-up” with a herder from another ranch over their bands of sheep.

Edwards had the man arrested, but later “dismissed the case and paid all the costs.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Sheep ‘Straying’"}]

Another mention of Edwards in the Lusk Herald a year earlier had him complaining that he had a lot of trouble with sheep “straying away.”

The Ebony account said that at one time, Edwards had 20,000 acres of land with oil rights, and during his normal operations had more than 1,000 head of cattle, 9,000 sheep, 200 horses, 5,000 chickens and 500 hogs.

He told the reporter that what he considered most important in his success was a “clean mind and a few years ago a pistol.”

“I didn’t have to use my pistol much, but then you don’t have to when you make your decision to stand at the outset,” he added.

Edwards built the stone house himself, helped pay for the construction of the Congregational Church in Lusk — where his wife sang in the choir — and told the reporter that Lethel had been “the guiding influence in my life.”

And it turned out that ranching was not his only interest and business success. 

A feature story in the Casper Tribune-Herald on July 16, 1945, profiled a restaurant co-owned by Mary Simms, a black woman, and Edwards that specialized in Southern fried chicken.

“In spite of rationing which has made it difficult to obtain the steaks to fill demand, the restaurant has kept abreast of the demands for the excellent fried chicken which has been its specialty,” the newspaper reported. “With the generous helping of chicken, French fries, a vegetable, dessert and the special golden brown succulent biscuits are served.”

Edwards’ love Lethel died of leukemia in 1945, according to the Converse County history, and he sold his ranch that contained 18 sections to four buyers in 1950.

The Scottsbluff Star-Herald on Jan. 7, 1951, recounted Edwards’ death at age 76.

“A Scottsbluff man died from suffocation Saturday night after water boiled away in a pot in which chicken was being cooked filling a basement room with smoke,” the newspaper reported. “The dead man was James E. Edwards, age unknown, who rented a room at 801 East Eighth Street.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"He is buried in Scottsbluff."}]

Panasuk said he was happy to get a photo of the once prosperous ranch while it still stands.

“The sad part about it is that probably about in 10 years it’s all going to be gone,” he said.

Edwards Ranch 7 18 26

<title>Douglas Photographer Captures Historic Black Rancher’s Homestead Under Milky Way | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Douglas photographer found an old ranch building that caught his eye for a night shot. He found out it was once owned by one of most prosperous black ranchers in the West. “No man will ever run Jim Edwards off of his land,” the rancher once told a reporter.

Douglas Photographer Captures Historic Black Rancher’s Homestead Under Milky Way

Government & Politics

Politics

Second-quarter campaign finance reports for Wyoming’s GOP primary House race are in, and four candidates have loaned themselves more than $1 million each.

Steve Friess has amassed the largest war chest with $2.5 million, which includes a $2 million self-loan. Reid Rasner is second, loaning himself $1.7 million out of $2 million, while two others, Secretary of State Chuck Gray and Teton-County-based attorney Frank Chapman, also hit above the $1 million mark with self-funding. 

Those four will face off against six other Republican contenders for the GOP nomination in Wyoming's Aug. 18 primary election in the hopes of winning the state's lone U.S. House race soon being vacated by Rep. Harriet Hageman. 

Friess has “invested $2 million of his own money in the effort,” as his Wednesday statement describes the self-loan. 

That puts Friess’s principal campaign committee Friess For Wyoming at nearly $2.2 million after another $92,361 in other contributions and $81,136 in transfers from other authorized committees.  

While U.S. Federal Election Commission reports for the second quarter surfaced this week, Friess’s financial lead is more notable because he declared his run later than most candidates in April.

Recognizable names appear in Friess’s donations receipts, such as National Museum of Military Vehicles founder Dan Starks and major 

The joint fundraising committee Friess Wyoming Victory Fund also raises money for the Friess campaign and has logged $363,626 in receipts, all from individuals.

Those include conservative media giant Tucker Carlson, Turning Point USA board member Doug DeGroote, and Friess’s mother Lynne.

Friess’s principal committee has $606,907 cash on hand — the most of any candidate.

[{"type":"text","text":"He’s spent about $1.49 million so far."}]

Friess's spokesman Tim Edson noted that within the past three months, Friess has outraised all opponents combined. 

"Republicans are rallying around Steve because they want a political outsider and businessman who can't be bought," wrote Edson in a Friday text message. "With a month to go, Steve has the money and the momentum — he's now tied for the lead and poised to overtake Chuck Gray and win this race." 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Next Up, Reid"}]

For total receipts, Rasner is second at nearly $2.044 million for his primary committee, Reid Rasner for Wyoming.   

That includes a nearly $1.71 million self-loan and $328,762 in other contributions.

Rasner’s committee’s ending cash on hand is $81,017.78, and he’s spent nearly $2 million.

His campaign did not return a Thursday text message request for comment by publication.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Chuck Gray"}]

Gray’s committee Citizens for Chuck Gray has logged $1,378,842 in receipts, including $230,936 in contributions and a $1.147 million self-loan.

[{"type":"text","text":"He’s spent about $852,365 so far."}]

Gray’s individual receipts show giving by Drake Hill, who is a Cheyenne-based attorney and husband to former Superintendent of Public Instruction Cindy Hill; Gray’s father Jan Charles Gray; and Gore-Tex heiress Susan Gore, among others.

Gray told Cowboy State Daily in a Thursday text message that his campaign is “in the lead, is gaining momentum and remains in a strong financial position.”

“Thank you to the people of Wyoming for your support,” wrote Gray, who said he has a proven track record of advancing Wyoming values “and will continue that work as a member of Congress.”

Second-quarter campaign finance reports for Wyoming’s GOP primary House race are in. Steve Friess has amassed the most with $2.5 million, which includes a $2 million self-loan. Reid Rasner is second, loaning himself $1.7 million out of $2 million.

Daily Smile: Saturday, April 13, 2024

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