A Sheridan man who fatally punched a local hockey coach during a 2024 fight will not have his four-to-six-year prison sentence overturned, as the Wyoming Supreme Court concluded Thursday that he failed to show he acted with self-defense.
Cody McCalla, 35, is serving his sentence at the Wyoming Honor Farm on one count of involuntary manslaughter, a state Department of Corrections webpage says.
Court documents say McCalla engaged Patrick Mudd, 48, in a fight July 12, 2024, after the pair had a dispute over a parking spot outside the Sheridan WYO rodeo.
Mudd knocked McCalla down multiple times during that fight. After a lull in the fight, McCalla walked up to Mudd and punched him so hard that Mudd died the next day, court documents say.
As his case unfolded in 2024 and 2025, McCalla argued that he acted in self-defense.
One witness testified that during a lull in the fight, McCalla reapproached Mudd and yelled, “You did this to my face because of a parking spot?”
Then McCalla punched Mudd “in a blur,” the witness added.
First, Sheridan County District Court Judge Benjamin Kirven rejected McCalla’s request to dismiss the case in February 2025, saying Mudd was not the initial aggressor in that final stage of the fight.
McCalla also filed a motion to compel prosecutors to hand over unredacted police reports.
Kirven rejected McCalla’s request.
McCalla filed a second request for the reports after he lost his self-defense hearing, but then McCalla signed a plea agreement before the judge could rule on his second request.
In the plea agreement, McCalla promised to plead “no contest” to the manslaughter charge. In exchange, he would accept a four-to-six-year prison sentence — and he could still reopen his self-defense argument before the Wyoming Supreme Court.
That ability to appeal the pre-trial self-defense issue made McCalla’s bargain a “conditional” plea agreement.
Kirven accepted the agreement and sentenced McCalla that April.
Justice Fenn Writes…
A unanimous opinion written by Wyoming Supreme Court Justice John Fenn, filed Thursday, upholds Kirven’s finding that McCalla didn’t act with self-defense.
Fenn declined to address McCalla’s argument that he was disadvantaged by not having the unredacted police reports in court ahead of his self-defense hearing — because McCalla’s plea agreement didn’t include a condition letting him wage that argument on appeal.
“Even if we assume Mr. Mudd was the initial aggressor, the State proved by a preponderance of the evidence the initial altercation had ended, and Mr. Mudd indicated his desire to end the altercation when he told Mr. McCalla to get away from him and walked away,” wrote Fenn. “The preponderance of the evidence shows Mr. McCalla reengaged Mr. Mudd, rendering Mr. McCalla the initial aggressor in the second physical encounter.”
The “initial aggressor” in a fight can’t win a self-defense dismissal unless he made clear signs that he wanted to stop fighting before the pivotal acts that make up the alleged crime, the state’s common law says.
More Detail About The Fight
McCalla and his friend Dustin Wheeler drove to the rodeo that night, says Kirven’s 2025 order rejecting McCalla’s self-defense argument.
Mudd’s partner Jennifer Gage was trying to park on West 5th Street, and there was a misunderstanding over whether she or Wheeler would get that parking spot.
As to whether the two vehicles actually collided, “testimony differed,” wrote the judge.
Mudd got out of Gage’s vehicle and verbally confronted Wheeler and McCalla, insulting them both and demanding they move their vehicle so Gage could park.
McCalla did so.
McCalla and Wheeler both testified at the January 2025 hearing that they felt threatened by Mudd, says Kirven’s order.
McCalla parked elsewhere, about 100 feet to the west. But then Wheeler and McCalla approached Mudd on foot, according to Gage’s testimony.
McCalla outpaced Wheeler, walked “aggressively” and verbally confronted Mudd, saying things like, “Do you want to go, (expletive)?” and, “Who are you calling (expletive),” the order relates from Gage’s and Wheeler’s separate testimonies.
A “very serious physical fight” followed, during which Mudd knocked McCalla down multiple times, the order says
Citing McCalla and Wheeler’s testimonies, Kirven wrote that Mudd landed many punches to McCalla’s face.
Gage testified that McCalla landed several punches to Mudd’s belly area.
The fight reached a lull, and Mudd walked toward Gage on the sidewalk.
Here Fenn, reflecting on this order and other parts of the case, pointed out a more vivid eyewitness testimony.
One witness said Mudd “had taken his hat off and was rubbing his face and it looked like the fight was over. She looked away and then she heard a scream,” wrote Fenn in his Thursday opinion.
Another eyewitness watched the two men struggle and separate briefly, "but then she heard a crunch followed by a scream,” added the justice.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
