CHEYENNE – A single charge was bound over to Laramie County District Court last week for a Utah man accused of tampering with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s computer system to successfully apply for two nonresident moose hunting tags in two months.
Byron Oldham was charged with an intellectual property crime of modifying data in a computer network. If convicted, he could face three years in prison.
According to charging documents:
An application development programmer for Wyoming Game and Fish contacted authorities about a possible breach of the computer system.
Oldham applied for two limited quota, non-resident moose applications in the Wyoming Game and Fish Department electronic license application system Jan. 24, 2016, and again Feb. 25, 2016.
“Moose are highly regulated, with limited quota licenses, and are coveted by hunters,” the probable cause affidavit states. “By Wyoming statute, applicants may only apply for one moose license per year.” The online system is designed to “time out” in 20 minutes. But authorities believe that Oldham was able to write a computer script that kept the application button active past its 20-minute window, thereby allowing him to apply for a second moose tag.
A search of Oldham by law enforcement revealed that he is the owner of two hunting businesses – GotMyTag LLC and
HuntinTool LLC.
 
DA files to dismiss charges in murder case
CHEYENNE – The Laramie County District Attorney’s Office filed a motion Friday afternoon to dismiss charges against a woman accused of killing her 16-month-old son in an effort to restart the clock on a legally mandated time period for a defendant to face trial.
Sabrina Sawicki, 25, is currently set to face trial Feb. 6 on charges of first-degree murder in connection with her son’s death.
But Laramie County District Attorney Jeremiah Sandburg said Friday that his office was worried key pieces of evidence wouldn’t be ready in time for that date.
The state has a maximum of 180 days to take a case to trial against a defendant without violating his or her constitutional right to a speedy trial. But if the judge agrees to dismiss the case without prejudice and Sandburg’s office decides to re-file, that clock will
start over.

Sandburg said his choice came after defense attorney Cassie Craven filed to access tissue samples taken from the dead boy. The coroner who examined the body, whose offices are in Colorado, agreed to make the samples available in a hearing this week, Sandburg said.
But it’s unclear how long it could take for the defense to get the samples and
examine them.
“This was our collective decision, and ultimately my decision, to move to dismiss so that we could ensure that the defense had enough time to look at those tissue samples,” Sandburg said.
Sawicki was charged with counts of first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse after a preliminary autopsy revealed that her son died from head trauma consistent with so-called “shaken baby syndrome,” according to court documents.
 
No foul play in county inmate’s death, says official coroner’s report
LANDER – The death of an inmate last month at the Fremont County Detention Center in Lander was due to natural causes, an official report said this week.
Christopher K. Chavez Jr., 60, died Dec. 16 of complications of chronic ethanol abuse, according to his autopsy results.
Fremont County Coroner Mark Stratmoen said the death had nothing to do with Chavez’s being in the detention center.
“It’s just one of those things - the long-term effects are going to catch up with you eventually, and it’s hard to say when its’ going to happen,” Stratmoen said Thursday.
There are a lot of general health issues associated with long-term ethanol abuse, Stratmoen said, like cirrhosis of the liver, for example.
Withdrawal can be another complication, but even though Chavez’s autopsy showed no relevant toxicology, Stratmoen said he did not die because of a lack of alcohol in his system.
Chavez was incarcerated Dec. 14.
Stratmoen noted that facilities like the detention center usually don’t admit people who are highly intoxicated.
He added the center was under extra scrutiny in this case because it involved an in-custody death.
“Whenever a person dies in custody we want to make sure it wasn’t due to some lapse of care or something like that - and it wasn’t in this case,” he said.
Investigators from his office and the Lander Police Department, which was the main investigating agency in the case, looked at “all the evidence” possible to determine there was nothing “unusual, suspicious or otherwise unexpected about the death,” Stratmoen said.
 
Activists protest private immigration detention center
CHEYENNE – Local Latino activists and civil rights advocates Saturday blasted a private prison company’s proposal to build an immigration holding center in Uinta County, denouncing it as troubled and emphasizing the pain its jail would bring to the state’s immigrant families.
Utah-based Management & Training Company has proposed a facility capable of detaining approximately 600 people as they await federal immigration proceedings in response to a request from federal immigration officials, according to the Casper Star-Tribune.
Federal immigration officials have not yet approved a site in Uinta County, but the proposal has enjoyed support from Evanston’s mayor and the Uinta County Commission, who say the center will bring jobs for local residents.
But Sabrina King, the policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Wyoming, told an audience at Laramie County Library and “#WyoSayNo!” gatherings across the state watching online via Facebook Live that the company had already proven itself dangerous in its dealings in Wyoming and other states.
“They ran their prisons so badly in Arizona that the state pulled people out of their facilities,” she said.
The Washington Post reported that Arizona did in fact pull 238 prisoners out of an MTC-run facility in 2010 following three prisoner escapes that year.
Gov. Doug Ducey later canceled the state’s contract with MTC to run the Kingman, Arizona, prison in 2015 following a riot.
Uinta County Commissioners and Evanston Mayor Kent Williams pushed back on some of the criticism in a news release Saturday night, saying that while they understood opponents’ concerns, they would hold the company to “the highest standards and expectations for the proper treatment of its detainees.”