Robert Guty

After learning that key witnesses made inconsistent statements, prosecutors have dropped all charges against a Cody nurse, who was alleged to have sexually assaulted an unconscious patient in 2015.

“The decision wasn’t made lightly,” said Park County Prosecuting Attorney Bryan Skoric, “… but it was the only ethical thing for me to do.”

At Skoric’s request, District Court Judge Bill Simpson dismissed the case on May 10. It means that, after more than four years, Robert Guty is in the clear; because the case was dismissed with prejudice, he will never have to face the allegations again.

Guty, 48, denied any wrongdoing, saying that the alleged assault never happened. His defense attorney, Ian Sandefer, declined to comment for this story; Guty did not respond to a request for comment sent through Sandefer.

A fellow nurse at the Northern Wyoming Surgical Center in Cody accused Guty of the crime in early 2015. She reported seeing Guty’s fingers inside a female patient’s genitalia while the woman was under general anesthesia and being prepped for a foot procedure. None of the other medical personnel who were in the surgical room that day saw anything suspicious. However, the report was bolstered by four other staffers at the Cody center, who said they had long suspected Guty had been inappropriately touching patients.

Guty was fired from the Northwest Wyoming Surgical Center after an internal investigation and authorities charged him with first-degree sexual assault in February 2015.

The case was set to go to trial in July, but Skoric moved to dismiss the felony charge this month. The prosecutor said he recently learned that witnesses he planned to call had given “completely different” statements about the events in question.

“The State no longer has a prosecutable case based upon these inconsistent statements,” Skoric wrote in his motion.

At issue are apparently two sets of statements that Northern Wyoming Surgical Center workers made about their observations and interactions with Guty: accounts they gave to law enforcement in early 2015 and sworn testimony they later gave in a civil suit that the patient brought against the surgical center.

When he reviewed the depositions from the civil case this month, Skoric said he found statements that were “substantially and materially inconsistent” with what the witnesses had told Cody police.

Skoric would not elaborate on which witnesses contradicted themselves or what parts of their stories had changed, noting that the civil case and the depositions have been placed under seal.

The timing of the prosecutor’s court filings indicates that the nurse who reported the sexual assault remained consistent in saying that she witnessed Guty sexually touch the patient in the surgical room. However, Skoric indicated that she and other surgical center personnel were inconsistent about other parts of the case.

“I had no credible witnesses to move forward with,” Skoric said.

The eyewitness and the four other workers all told law enforcement that they had seen Guty’s hands in inappropriate places going back as far as two years earlier.

One scrub technician told Cody police she’d seen Guty’s hands in inappropriate places approximately 20 times; another scrub tech said she’d started keeping a journal of what she saw and heard from others; another nurse told police that, when she underwent a procedure at the surgical center, she wore extra clothing because of her concern with Guty; yet another nurse said that she’d logged incidents involving Guty in a calendar, writing down dates when she observed or heard from coworkers that Guty had placed his hands under the blankets with female patients.

The entire case wound up hinging on those statements and, Skoric indicated, some parts proved to be inconsistent.

Prosecutors wanted to introduce the women’s suspicions as evidence, to explain why the nurse decided to look under the blanket for Guty’s hand during the January 2015 procedure.

“[The nurse] told me that they have assumed inappropriate touching by Robert Guty, but this is the first time it has been witnessed,” Cody Police Lt. Jason Stafford wrote in court records.

However, Guty’s defense attorney, Ian Sandefer of Casper, argued the women’s suspicions should be excluded; he said the unproven accusations would unfairly prejudice the jury against Guty.

“The heart of this case is really whether it’s ever acceptable for the state to seek the conviction of a criminal defendant based on speculations, assumptions, innuendo and gossip,” Sandefer said at a hearing last year.

Then-District Court Judge Steven Cranfill ruled in 2017 that he would allow testimony about the women’s suspicions, which led to a plea deal.

Guty agreed to conditionally plead “no contest” to a reduced count of third-degree sexual assault — with the condition being that he could appeal Cranfill’s evidentiary ruling to the Wyoming Supreme Court.

If the Supreme Court agreed with Cranfill and ruled that the testimony about the women’s suspicions was admissible, Guty would serve a year in jail and four years of supervised probation; if the court reversed Cranfill’s decision and blocked the evidence, Skoric would likely drop the case.

However, the Supreme Court ultimately declined to rule on the issue, sending the case back to district court for a trial.

In the meantime, the patient sued Northwest Wyoming Surgical Center (NWSC) over the alleged sexual assault. Given the reports that center staff had long believed Guty was inappropriately touching patients, she accused the center of negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress.

“NWSC, its administration, staff and Board of Directors knew, or should have known, of the danger posed to female surgical patients by the offending nurse employee,” said a portion of the complaint, referring to Guty.

The surgical center denied any wrongdoing in its initial response to the suit. Then, about six months after it had been filed, Judge Simpson sealed the case at the patient’s request; in a December 2017 order, Simpson said the civil case was “of such a nature that confidentiality outweighs public disclosure.”

At a sentencing hearing in Guty’s criminal case just a couple months earlier, the patient spoke of not wanting to be publicly identified.

“I live in fear that a new article comes out and the entire town will know that it was me who was the patient that was raped by nurse Guty at the Northern Wyoming Surgical Center,” the woman had told Judge Simpson.

Before the civil case reached a confidential settlement, the attorneys took sworn testimony from the center staffers who had made the reports about Guty.

In October, Skoric asked for access to those depositions and other statements the witnesses had made.

Judge Simpson agreed in December, but prohibited Skoric and Sandefer from making any copies or distributing the information in any way.

That slowed down the process, with Skoric only reviewing the depositions in detail earlier this month; that’s when he said he realized the nurses’ testimonies were “remarkably different” than what they told Cody police.

Even before that, however, the prosecution had issues to overcome at trial.

Defense attorneys had questioned the motives of the staff making the accusations against Guty — and emphasized the fact that, in a room full of several people, only one nurse reported seeing anything untoward.

Further, a pyschosexual evaluation conducted at the request of the Wyoming State Board of Nursing questioned whether Guty had assaulted the patient.

In a February 2015 evaluation, Dr. Amanda Turlington of Sheridan found “no evidence that [Guty] poses any harm toward patients” and said “there appears to be no solid reason to substantiate the allegations against [Guty],” according to an order from the nursing board.

As for the patient, she was under general anesthesia at the time of the alleged assault and has no memory of what did or didn’t happen.

At a 2017 hearing, she spoke of the impact the incident has had on her life.

“This horrible act and this violation of my trust has forever changed my life and that of my family,” she said. Aside from close family members, “I can no longer trust anyone,” she said, adding that she expected to feel pain and trauma for the rest of her life.

Skoric said he spoke with the woman’s family before dismissing the case; he called the situation “a tough one.”

Asked whether he believes a crime was committed, the prosecutor said it’s not an issue of what he believes.

“It’s a matter of what we could go in and prove to a jury,” Skoric said, “and I had no proof left.”

When the criminal case was pending, Guty voluntarily agreed not to practice nursing. His license expired at the end of 2018.