A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit brought by a pair of out-of-state hunters, who claimed a game warden wrongfully detained and prosecuted them in 2019.

U.S. District Court Judge Alan Johnson ruled Wednesday that, under existing federal case law, former Powell Game Warden Chris Queen is immune from the suit brought by Dr. Blendi Cumani of North Dakota and Roland Shehu of Pennsylvania. The hunters disagree: Their attorney, Brad Booke of Jackson, told the Tribune they will appeal the decision.

Following an investigation by Queen, Cumani and Shehu were charged with four counts of wanton waste. Park County prosecutors alleged that the men had wantonly wasted four elk during a guided October 2019 hunt in the Heart Mountain area, but Shehu and Cumani contended that they weren’t the ones who’d wounded the elk in question. 

Jurors acquitted the hunters of all charges at a late 2020 trial and the men sued the Wyoming Game and Fish Department and Queen in early 2022.

In their suit, Shehu and Cumani alleged that Queen illegally arrested them — ordering them to stay at their outfitters’ home for roughly nine hours while he investigated. The hunters also contended they were maliciously prosecuted, asserting the evidence actually indicated they were innocent.

“They should never have been detained, charged or prosecuted in the first place, and doing so violated their clearly established constitutional rights to be free from wrongful detention and wrongful prosecution,” attorney Booke wrote in one filing.

As for Queen, he and his counsel with the Wyoming Attorney General’s Office generally disputed the version of events provided by Cumani and Shehu. For example, Queen said in a sworn statement that he never gave the men orders to stay put and that they “were free to leave any time they wanted.”

However, even assuming the hunters’ accounts were true, the AG’s office said the suit should be dismissed. Two judges agreed.

Legal rulings

Park County District Court Judge Bill Simpson tossed the claims against the Game and Fish last year, and, after the litigation moved to federal court, Judge Johnson did the same with the claims against Queen.

Cumani and Shehu’s allegations didn’t meet the legal criteria to pursue a malicious prosecution claim, Johnson ruled last week, and he said allegations didn’t constitute a false arrest.

In his 24-page decision, the judge noted that the third member of the hunting party, George Schnell II, had accidentally killed a bull elk on a cow license that day, and that Queen had received information indicating other elk might have been wounded by the group.

“Because Mr. Queen could reasonably have had probable cause to think that at least [some] of the members of the hunting group had committed a crime, and because the law was not clearly established whether arresting all three of them was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, this Court finds that Mr. Queen cannot be held responsible as a matter of law,” Johnson wrote in part.

The judge also said the warden would have been justified in forcing the men to stay at their outfitter’s home.

“While Dr. Cumani and Mr. Shehu’s nine-hour detention probably would not be justifiable in other circumstances, we hold that, within the context of investigating a backcountry hunting violation, it was not unconstitutional,” Johnson wrote.

Bad blood

There had been bad blood between the warden and the hunters’ outfitter ahead of the October 2019 hunt.

According to Queen, there had been “several occasions” in which other hunters guided by Richmond Ranch Outfitting had shot bull elk on the wrong licenses — including two incidents in the weeks leading up to Cumani, Shehu and Schnell’s outing.

The company’s owner, Brett Richmond, asserted at a deposition that Queen was “screaming” and “going nuts” when they first spoke on the day of the hunt in question.

“He [Queen] said that we’re gonna have to pay for all these wounded elk and we can’t be doing this kind of thing and this and that,” Richmond recalled at the deposition.

However, Richmond contended the whole thing was “a setup” — asserting at the deposition that two of the elk in question weren’t even injured when Queen dispatched them. He went as far as accusing the warden of “poaching” the animals.

Judge Johnson mentioned some of the outfitter’s allegations in his ruling, but said the hunters and their attorney “provide[d] no evidence to support why Mr. Richmond thought the elk was uninjured, why Mr. Queen would kill an uninjured elk, or how he would have tracked and killed a bull elk in the span of half an hour if it were not injured.”

In an affidavit, Queen reaffirmed his account that he dispatched the two elk because they appeared to be seriously injured and unable to flee; upon inspecting the animals, he said it appeared that bullets had pierced and broken the animals’ legs.

Even if Queen did inappropriately dispatch an elk while the hunters were waiting at Richmond’s home, Johnson said the warden was protected by qualified immunity because “the law is not clearly established regarding extended detentions.”

An expensive case

Cumani and Shehu reportedly spent tens of thousands of dollars defending themselves at the 2020 trial. In their suit, the men attempted to recoup what they described as lost income and wages, but if the case had proceeded to a trial, they would not have been able to pursue those alleged losses; Johnson barred those claims in May, after the plaintiff failed to comply with three court orders to provide certain tax documents to Queen’s attorneys.

If Cumani and Shehu follow through with their plans to challenge Johnson’s summary judgment, the case will next head to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.