State Briefs

Cody woman sentenced to prison in meth ring case

CODY (WNE) — A Cody woman will spend the next 3-5 years in prison for her role in a large-scale methamphetamine ring.

Wendy Lee was sentenced Friday in Cody by District Court Judge Bill Simpson for conspiring to possess meth with intent to deliver and for possession of meth with intent to deliver.

“I regret deeply everything that has happened,” Lee told the judge at her sentencing.

The sentence was part of a no contest plea Lee and her public defender Timothy Blatt made with the state, which dropped one intent to deliver a controlled substance felony originally charged against Lee.

Although a pre-sentence investigation report recommended extended supervised probation for Lee’s punishment, the state disagreed.

Lee has no prior felonies and one domestic violence charge which she pled guilty to.

Police say they found Wendy Lee, 50, with 4.6 grams of meth – over the three-gram felony threshold – and a few doses of LSD – a misdemeanor – in March 2018. After entering an initial not guilty plea to those charges in Natrona County District Court, Lee had a change of plea hearing July 25.

Wendy Lee’s husband Bill Lee was allegedly found holding just over 30 grams of meth when he was arrested with her in Casper.

Bill Lee is alleged to have retailed more than $38,000 worth of the drug in a two week period as Colorado meth distributor Brian Bland was allegedly selling to Lee at $6,500 per pound or roughly $406 per ounce.

Bill Lee was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Casper on Jan. 3 to 11 years in prison along with alleged co-conspirators Howard Shull and Phillip McGuire.

Death penalty repeal clears House, heads for Senate

CHEYENNE (WNE) — State lawmakers ran through one last round of emotional reflections on the death penalty Friday before pushing a bill to repeal it through the House of Representatives.

House Bill 145 — the first of its kind to last so long in the Wyoming Legislature — is now on to the Senate, after the first chamber passed it by a healthy margin of 36-21. In 2018 a similar bill lost by a roughly reverse “no” vote, and the year before another died in committee.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jared Olsen, R-Laramie, has become perhaps the most morally charged legislation of the session.

“It will, for generations to come, be a testament of where we stand and what we want our laws to say,” Olsen said.

Many arguments for and against the bill grew out of the legislators’ spiritual beliefs or their connections to incidents of violence.

Some pleaded with their colleagues to “remember the victims.” Rep. Roy Edwards, R-Campbell, argued the death penalty should remain as a means of retribution for them and their families.

But others countered that “eye-for-eye” justice, satisfying as it may initially seem, does little to assuage the suffering of those who have lost loved ones.

Rep. Danny Eyre, R-Uinta, grew up with Mark Hopkinson, who in 1992 was the last man to be executed in Wyoming. He knew Hopkinson’s family and the families of his four victims.

He recalled thinking the execution — which he supported at the time — would bring relief to him and his community.

“I felt just the opposite,” he said. “It was a dark, sad day, and it didn’t do anything to help relieve the pain of those family members who had had loved ones killed.”

Parents of New Year’s baby charged with felony child abuse

LARAMIE (WNE) — A Laramie couple, Kaycee and Kelvie Easton, was arrested last week for almost three years worth of child abuse.

The Eastons were featured in the Laramie Boomerang earlier this month after becoming the parents of the first baby born at Ivinson Memorial Hospital in 2019. Their new daughter is their fourth child.

However, staff at Albany County School District No. 1 approached the Laramie Police Department officer Elizabeth Smith after becoming concerned about some of bruising suffered by one of the Eastons’ children who said the bruising came after Kaycee Easton held her down on the floor.

The Eastons gave conflicting accounts of how the bruising occurred.

Smith already knew of another incident in which Kaycee Easton apparently restrained a child for two hours.

Numerous records indicate both parents “vilified, verbally attacked and scapegoated” one of the children.

Smith’s investigation found that the parents sometimes withheld medical or psychiatric treatment, and would remove their children from hospitals despite the advice of medical staff.

A police affidavit details six pages worth of extensive child abuse.

Louis Farley, a physician at IMH, said that the parents’ behavior is “outside of a healthy or normal realm,” according to the affidavit.

The Eastons have each been charged with two counts of felony child abuse. Both have been released on signature bonds.