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 testified against him.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
