Randall Bailey

Last month, a Cody man conceded that he’d committed a pair of federal crimes by possessing explosive devices, a silencer and — in spite of a judge’s order to give them up — numerous rifles and pistols.

Randall Bailey pleaded guilty to two felony charges in Wyoming’s U.S. District Court as part of a deal with federal prosecutors.

However, Bailey is continuing to vehemently dispute a set of related state-level charges pending in Park County courts. Acting as his own attorney, Bailey recently filed a civil rights suit that requests millions of dollars from various officials and private citizens he believes have wronged him in his criminal cases and earlier divorce.

A 2024 protection order

Bailey’s current legal trouble can generally be traced back to a protection order that Park County Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah issued in April 2024. After hearing hours of testimony, the judge concluded that Bailey had harassed his ex-wife in the wake of their 2023 divorce.

The judge explicitly told Bailey to stay away from his ex’s home, but police say a security camera captured him pulling up in front of the woman’s residence and rummaging through her car on an early morning in November 2024.

The distraught woman — who’d reported other violations in the preceding months — reportedly told police, “I don’t ever feel safe anymore.”

Cody officers arrested Bailey the following day and found one of his ex’s ID badges in his van, a stun gun in his jacket and a loaded revolver in his trunk. The arrest was followed by felony charges of stalking and burglary — plus a search of Bailey’s rural Cody home that turned up two apparent pipe bombs, a pistol that was suspected to be an automatic weapon, a silencer and standard firearms Darrah had barred him from possessing.

At a hearing last year, Deputy Park County Attorney Larry Eichele called it “the poster child case for, specifically, victim safety and public safety” and said it was “simply too dangerous” to let Bailey out of jail while the charges were pending. Bailey's bail was set at $500,000 cash.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Wyoming brought its own felony charges against Bailey in April. He was taken into federal custody and shuttled to a jail in Wheatland.

Filing complaints

Although he’s admitted to two of the charges in the federal case, Bailey asserts in a new suit that he’s been the victim of years worth of false information, flawed investigations, exaggerations, unfair judges and substandard care in jail.

In a handwritten 41-page complaint he filed in federal court last week, Bailey contends that 19 different people involved in his divorce case and criminal proceedings have violated his civil rights — including his ex-wife and her divorce attorney, the officers who investigated him, the deputy county attorneys who prosecuted him, a local advocate for victims of domestic abuse, the jailers who’ve overseen his detention in Cody and Wheatland, Judge Darrah, Park County Sheriff Darrell Steward and Cody Police Chief Jason Stafford.

While his demands vary by defendant, Bailey wants over $20 million in total, mostly made up of punitive damages. He’s also seeking reimbursement for his attorneys fees, child support payments and $75 for every hour he’s spent in jail since his arrest last year through his federal sentencing hearing in January (that time amounts to $759,600).

Bailey made similar complaints about his continued detention in August, when he personally filed a petition for habeas corpus and asked to be released. In the document, Bailey complained about the $500,000 bail that had been set on the state charges.

“Opinion, not fact is the basis of this case,” Bailey wrote in part, alleging that the “judge and police have threatened and perjured themselves.”

U.S. District Judge Scott Skavdahl quickly dismissed the petition, saying the proper procedure was for Bailey to seek a bail modification through his attorney.

Further, “Mr. Bailey’s complaints about his state bond amount are irrelevant because he is in federal custody,” Skavdahl wrote. He noted that U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Shickich ordered Bailey’s pre-trial detention in April, citing in part the weapons involved, the still-pending charges in Park County, prior arrests and “safety concerns.”

Pleading guilty seeking a trial

A couple months after filing the unsuccessful petition, Bailey accepted a plea deal offered by federal prosecutors. On Oct. 9, Bailey pleaded guilty to felony counts of possession of a firearm by a person subject to a court order and possession of an unregistered firearm.

The first count relates to 22 rifles and pistols found in Bailey’s home despite the protection order while the latter relates to an unregistered silencer and two destructive devices the feds say “were designed as weapons and would be properly identified as improvised explosive bombs.”

Two additional felony charges were dismissed as a part of Bailey’s deal with the government.

While the full terms of the deal have not been made available to the public, court records indicate it involved Bailey agreeing to forfeit all of the seized weapons and a significant cache of ammunition to the government. Meanwhile, the Park County Attorney’s Office agreed that any sentence Bailey might receive in his state-level case can be served at the same time as his sentence in the federal case. That’s purely a hypothetical, though, as Bailey has pleaded not guilty to the county charges and is presumed to be innocent.

Deputy Park County Attorney Eichele — who is handling the county-level case and agreed to the concurrent sentences — is among the people Bailey is suing.

Bailey is set to be sentenced on the federal charges on Jan. 6 in Casper and to be tried on the Park County charges in Cody in March.

(Editor's note: This version corrects information about Bailey's bonds in his county cases.)