Cody Mayor Lee Ann Reiter is pictured in a July 19 booking photo.

Photo courtesy Park County Sheriff's Office

The City of Cody’s mayor spent much of the weekend in jail, after being arrested early Saturday morning on allegations of drunk driving.

Lee Ann Reiter, who took office in January, faces a misdemeanor charge of driving under the influence of alcohol and two other misdemeanors relating to alleged turning violations. Reiter pleaded not guilty to all three charges during a Monday afternoon hearing in Park County Circuit Court.

Reiter was pulled over around 2 a.m. Saturday by a Cody police officer who allegedly observed improper driving. The officer quickly turned the traffic stop over to a Park County sheriff’s deputy after realizing the mayor was the driver and coming to suspect she was impaired.

Reiter, 65, was arrested by the sheriff’s office after failing sobriety tests, charging documents allege, and a breath test administered at the Park County Detention Center put her blood alcohol content at 0.19%. A person is presumed to be too impaired to drive at 0.08%.

Reiter opted to have a separate blood test conducted at Cody Regional Health, but those results were not available at press time.

At Monday’s court hearing, Reiter was allowed to remain free on her own recognizance while the case is pending. Under standard DUI bond conditions, she is prohibited from entering bars or from possessing or consuming alcohol.

Reiter is also generally barred from being around anyone who’s drinking, though her defense attorney successfully sought an exception for events related to her mayoral duties.

“... being the mayor, there’s times she does need to go to functions [at] which there would be alcohol served,” Reiter’s attorney, Brigita Krisjansons, told the court, adding that, “Obviously, she’s very well aware that she cannot consume any alcohol.”

With no objection from the prosecution, Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah approved the exception.

Saturday morning arrest

It was around 2 a.m. Saturday that Cody Police Officer Tanner Wichern reportedly saw a blue GMC truck “oscillating within its lane” on Rumsey Avenue and driving “abnormally close” to some parked vehicles, charging documents allege.

At the intersection of Rumsey and 9th Street, the truck reportedly failed to signal its righthand turn and then later made too wide of a turn onto Sheridan Avenue, according to an affidavit.

Wichern eventually pulled the vehicle over in the 700 block of Sheridan Avenue, near Cody Regional Health.

During Wichern’s initial conversation with Reiter, who was the lone occupant, she indicated she was coming from the downtown area and “made an admission to consuming alcohol,” the affidavit says.

Based on his observations, Wichern apparently had concerns the mayor might be impaired and the sheriff’s office was contacted. The city officer reportedly explained that “to avoid any possible conflict of interest, he would like for me to take over the investigation of the traffic stop,” wrote Deputy Chris Aldrete, who composed the affidavit.

The deputy asked Reiter to perform a series of sobriety tests. When she got out of the truck, the deputy said she was “very unsteady on her feet,” and her speech was thick, deliberate and slurred.

Reiter struggled with the walk-and-turn and held the one-leg stand for about four seconds before losing her balance, the affidavit says.

“For Reiter’s safety I did not allow her to continue the maneuver,” Aldrete wrote, and he took her into custody.

Not a 'sober and sign'

Depending on the circumstances of a DUI arrest, officers at some agencies may opt for a so-called “sober and sign.” In those instances, the defendant is released from custody once all of the alcohol is out of their system, and they sign a promise to appear in court at a later date.

In this case, Park County Sheriff Darrell Steward said his office intended to have Reiter held in jail until her Monday appearance in Park County Circuit Court. Within Wyoming courts, authorities must get a person in front of a judge within 72 hours of their arrest. However, case law also says officers can only hold an individual without a warrant for 48 hours; to extend a hold to 72 hours, they need a judge to agree there’s probable cause.

Steward said his office emailed a copy of Aldrete’s affidavit of probable cause to Judge Darrah around 12:30 a.m. Sunday. However, when the 48 hours ran out around 4:30 a.m. Monday, the detention center hadn’t heard from the judge, Steward said.

As a result, Park County Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Skoric said he directed jail staff to release Reiter and another defendant; that 25-year-old man had similarly been arrested for suspected drunk driving on Saturday morning in Powell, and authorities similarly didn’t get the OK from the court to continue holding him through Monday afternoon.

“That’s pretty rare for that to happen,” Skoric said of the situation in an interview, “but we abided by the law. That’s what the law says.”

Information kept offline

During Reiter’s time in jail — from early Saturday morning through early Monday morning — she did not appear on the Park County Detention Center’s online list of inmates.

The arrest of an elected official is unusual, and Steward said he was later told that a deputy kept the mayor’s booking information off the site “because of her political position.” That shouldn’t have happened, the sheriff said, and Detention Center Administrator Lt. Joe Torczon planned a staff-wide email to make sure it doesn’t happen in the future.

“It doesn’t matter who does this stuff, it’s handled all the same,” Steward said.

Although Reiter wasn’t on the sheriff's list of “Incarcerated People,” she did at least temporarily appear under the “Arrests” tab, which led to screenshots of her booking information being shared on social media and elsewhere.

Reiter didn’t immediately respond to a Monday afternoon text, while Krisjansons declined to comment.

A trial in the case is tentatively set for Dec. 11.