A Sweetwater County prosecutor is challenging a judge’s decision to expunge a Rock Springs man’s 1997 child sexual abuse conviction for sexually touching an 8-year-old girl, court documents show.
The Wyoming Supreme Court now may review that decision. The high court filed the challenge, Wyoming vs. Dixon Dean Cole, in its list of cases Monday.
Cole, 62, confessed in a 1996 change of plea hearing in Sweetwater County District Court to sexually touching a girl three years prior. The girl would have been about 8 years old at the time of the abuse, according to a transcript of the confession supplied in a newer criminal case against Cole.
He was sentenced to three years’ probation under a now-obsolete misdemeanor: fourth-degree sexual assault of a child, and another felony conviction pertaining to sexual contact with another little girl, age 7, court documents say.
The Legislature repealed the fourth-degree sexual assault of a child misdemeanor just weeks after Cole’s conviction. But the conduct the law described is now included under Wyoming’s third-degree sexual assault crime — and is now a felony.
An order the Wyoming Supreme Court filed Tuesday indicates that the Sweetwater County District Court has expunged Cole's sex-crime conviction, which means the crime is classified and shielded from public view.
The Sweetwater County Attorney's office is challenging that expungement, the file shows.
Fast Forward To 2023
By June 12, 2023, Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Detective Stephanie Cassidy was scrolling through the county’s sex offender registry system as a compliance check, when she noticed Cole was 54 days late on his deadline to check in with the sheriff’s office, says an affidavit filed days later.
Cole was on the Wyoming “J” sex offender list at the time, the most demanding category, and was required to check in with the sheriff’s office every three months.
Sweetwater County Deputy Attorney Micaela Lira charged Cole one week later with the felony of failure to register as a sex offender. That’s punishable by up to five years in prison and $1,000 in fines.
Cole called the charge unlawful.
He argued that he shouldn’t have to register as a sex offender because the fourth-degree sexual abuse of a misdemeanor conviction that placed him on the list isn’t in Wyoming’s laws anymore, and isn’t included on the “J” category’s list of crimes.
“And he should never have been required to comply with subsection (J’s) requirements in the first place,” wrote Cole’s attorney in a Dec. 18, 2023, motion asking Sweetwater County District Court Judge Richard Lavery to dismiss the charge.
The attorney pointed to Wyoming case law instructing courts to interpret laws according to their “plain language” and to consider that when the legislature leaves phrases out of a law, it does so intentionally.
Lira countered Dec. 29, 2023, pointing to a Wyoming Attorney General’s 2010 legal review concluding that Cole’s conduct from the misdemeanor conviction falls under the third-degree sexual assault law and requires him to register on the “J” sex offender list.
The “J” list also contains some language surrounding crimes from other jurisdictions, or similar crimes. The language fell under dispute in this case. It says people have to register if they committed “an offense in another jurisdiction containing the same or similar elements, or arising out of the same or similar facts or circumstances as a criminal offense specified in this subsection.”
Lira pointed to this as proof that Cole’s crime could be roped in as matching the crimes described in "J" – while the defense attorney pointed to it as proof that Cole’s crime shouldn’t be included since it didn’t happen outside Wyoming.
Denied, But …
Lavery on April 4, 2024, denied Cole’s motion to dismiss the failure-to-register charge.
He noted that the defense attorney didn’t file a reply brief to Lira’s argument by the deadline or challenge Lira’s inclusion of an “unsigned transcript” — an indication that the argument before the judge was less robust than it could have been.
“Consequently,” Lavery wrote, “the court concludes subsection (J) applies (to Cole).”
Cole next agreed to have a bench trial to contest the charge. That trial was rescheduled multiple times and ultimately never happened: Lira on Feb. 11 of this year asked Lavery to send the case back down to the misdemeanor-level Rock Springs Circuit Court.
Cole had negotiated a settlement: he pleaded “no contest” to police interference on March 17, then was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation, with the threat of one year in jail if he violated his probation terms.
Invisible File
Cole’s 1996 sex case is not publicly visible and appears to have been sealed from public view. But the Wyoming Supreme Court’s Monday filing of Lira’s challenge indicates that, at some point, Cole applied for an expungement of one or both sexual contact charges.
And at some point, the judge granted that request.
It is unclear whether Cole has also applied to be relieved of his registration requirement, or the status of such a plea. As of Thursday, he was still on Wyoming’s sex offender registry list.
Wyoming Supreme Court Chief Justice Kate Fox ordered the Sweetwater District Court on Tuesday to unseal the case – but just for the “parties” involved in the appeal. Meaning, the public still can’t see it while the high court contemplates the expungement.
Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe declined Thursday to comment to Cowboy State Daily.
Lavery said the matter is pending on appeal, and Wyoming courts generally do not comment on pending matters.
"However, with respect to the procedural aspect of the case, sealing is governed by Wyoming statutes and the Wyoming Rules Governing Access to Case Records. An expungement of a conviction is sealed as a matter of law," wrote the judge in response to a question about the decision to seal the case.
Neither side has filed an argument in the Wyoming Supreme Court challenge yet.
Cole's attorney declined Thursday to comment to Cowboy State Daily.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
