It’s been over five years since a trio of Wyoming cowboys thought it a good idea to rope and ride a sickly moose and a Uinta County judge has finally put the case to bed. Sitting in court earlier this month, Third District Judge James Kaste sentenced the three men involved in the May 2021 incidents on the M Arrow Ranch, and did something the pre-negotiated plea deals did not anticipate: he put the adult in the room in jail.
For those who have followed the coverage here, the basic facts have not changed. In May 2021, Range Martin (then 18) and Kylan Platt (then 17) roped, rode, and spurred a visibly infirm cow moose on Justin Martin’s roughly 5,000-acre ranch north of Bear River. Video later recovered from Justin Martin’s phone shows him filming one of the encounters, laughing, and encouraging the rider saying “All right now, spur that son of a bitch.” The animal was described by investigators as unhealthy and was believed to be blind in one eye. The younger men initially claimed they were simply trying to move the moose while working cattle, but Game and Fish testimony at sentencing indicated the video showed no nearby cattle or fences.
Range Martin and Platt accepted plea deals earlier this summer, and at the October 2nd hearing, Judge Kaste largely followed those agreements and handed both of them three years of supervised probation. Their probation was handled under Wyoming’s deferred-sentencing statute for first-time offenders, which can keep a felony off their permanent record if they complete the term without further trouble. All three men were ordered to complete 576 hours of community service (the judge suggested Game and Fish work as a productive option), pay $275 in court costs, and forfeit hunting, trapping, fishing, and shed-hunting privileges for the duration of their probation.
Justin Martin, the 55-year-old former Wyoming Livestock Board brand inspector and the man who filmed and encouraged the behavior, received a much different outcome. His plea agreement, which prosecutors said was deliberately modeled on the Cody Roberts wolf case, called for supervised probation with no jail time. Surprising Martin in the court room that day, Kaste rejected that flavor of treatment and instead imposed 30 days in the Uinta County Detention Center, to be served immediately, and increased Martin’s probation from two to three years. According to reports, Martin appeared stunned as he was taken into custody from the courtroom.
Kaste didn’t mince words about his reasoning, calling Martin the adult who should have stopped the younger men rather than filming it and egging them on.
“Wildlife of Wyoming belongs to the people of Wyoming,” he said. “You do this kind of nonsense in Wyoming, where we value our wildlife, you’re going to jail.”
Special Prosecutor Gaston Gosar told the court that the terms offered to Martin had been shaped by the Roberts outcome. A retired judge who handled an earlier stage of the moose case had described the conduct as serving “no other goal than the sheer joy of dominating and domineering a weak and vulnerable animal.”
For the time being, Martin remains a convicted felon (and therefore barred from possessing firearms) because his guilty plea was conditional. He is appealing the trial court’s decision to admit the phone videos, which were discovered during a separate 2022 Game and Fish investigation involving an outfitter and a neighboring property. That appeal is pending before the Wyoming Supreme Court. He had already been fired from the Livestock Board after his plea; Governor Mark Gordon called the behavior “absolutely irresponsible” and “unbefitting a brand inspector.” A sentiment that is most certainly echoed by the vast majority of us in the hunting and ranching community.
Thankfully in this case, the adult who filmed and celebrated the abuse left the courtroom in custody, a message the judge certainly intended as a signal. Whether that signal holds, or whether the Supreme Court later overturns Martin’s conviction on the evidence issue, is the remaining open question. For now, the five-year case that began with videos on a rancher’s phone has produced its first jail sentence.
