PINEDALE (Wyoming News Exchange) — The 2019 livestock brand-inspection misdemeanor case against Rex. F. Rammell is picking up about where it left off eight months ago – in Sublette County Circuit Court.
Rammell contested five citations after a deputy stopped him in June 2019 and he did not have current brand inspections for horses he was moving from Sweetwater to Sublette County.
He has a Rock Springs mailing address and owns a veterinary clinic in Pinedale.
He argued the state law requiring brand inspections between counties violates his rights and the deputy’s stop constituted a “warrantless seizure.”
At the start Judge Curt Haws assigned the case to Magistrate Clay Kainer, who agreed in early December 2019 with Rammell’s motion to suppress the deputy’s report as evidence.
Magistrate Kainer, however, was not officially appointed and did not have authority to rule on evidence suppression.
The Sublette County attorney’s office challenged Kainer’s standing in district court, where the judge declared Kainer’s ruling “null and void” and returned the case to circuit court.
In the decision, district court Judge John Fenn placed the burden of proof on Rammell, saying, “Upon remand (Rammell) will have the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that (the law) is constitutionally defective.”
The Sublette County attorney’s office requested “the final hearing” so Rammell had “an opportunity to meet his burden of proving WS 11-21-103(a) unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Rammell’s hearing is set for Dec. 18 at 2 p.m. in Sublette County Circuit Court.
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