A jury on Friday found a 43-year-old Cheyenne man not guilty in the death of his estranged wife’s boyfriend on December 12.
The situation isn’t as simple as it seems. And it has nothing to do with a love triangle, Joseph Gish told Cowboy State Daily in a phone interview on Monday, reflecting on his five-day manslaughter trial and expressing relief at being able to remain involved in the lives of his adult daughters.
If convicted, Gish could have served up to 20 years in prison and lost his gun and voting rights.
“I wasn’t really worried about the gun rights or the voting rights,” Gish told me. “I just didn’t want my kids to see me through glass and not be able to be a part of their lives. That’s what scared me.
“I didn’t want to miss my family growing up, and my kids growing up and having kids of their own.”
Now that he has been acquitted, he is looking forward to his two daughters, ages 24 and 21, starting their own families in the near future.
The Dispute
According to court documents, at 7:27 p.m. on December 12, Laramie County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to a Cheyenne home for a 911 call about a domestic disturbance.
They later discovered that Gregory Meyer, 55, died of a chest wound at Cheyenne Regional Medical Center.
Gish admitted on the scene to doing “the stabbing” after he and Meyer got into a fight at home.
According to court documents, Gish and his wife Lisa had been estranged for many years and had not been intimate.
Joseph Gish, Lisa, and their adult daughter Aurora shared a home in Cheyenne.
Meyer, Lisa’s boyfriend, would frequent the house.
People told deputies on the scene that everyone usually got along well.
However, on December 12, the men got into a fight over a dayslong plumbing project Meyer did in Gish’s usual bathroom, according to the evidentiary affidavit.
In his Monday interview, Gish reflected on the larger conflict.
He stated that Meyer intended to kick Aurora out of the house. He also stated that Meyer was a drug user whose meth use posed a problem. This is a theme that also appears in court documents.
Lisa later described the men’s altercation as a “scuffle.”
Aurora told deputies Meyer pushed Gish against the wall, then attempted to punch her but missed and struck her in the face instead.
That’s when Gish wielded his “little silver knife,” a pocket knife.
Aurora said: Meyer charged at Gish and ran into the knife.
His own words
Gish described the incident on Monday.
“I went into the bathroom and asked him to leave the bathroom,” he told me. “He got upset and that started the physical altercation.”
Meyer then struck Aurora.
“I looked over at Aurora to make sure she was OK after he hit her,” she said. “He noticed that my attention was diverted away from him, and he wanted to take advantage of it. … But when I looked back at him, he had made contact with my body, and the knife was between us.”
Meyer died of a chest wound later in the hospital. According to court documents, the knife blade measured approximately 3.5 inches in length.
“It was just, kind of, one thing after another — really fast — just exploded out of control,” he said.
It was difficult to tell what was going on during the fight, he said. When their bodies made contact, he knew the knife was between them and had “impaled” Meyer.
“This whole time I’ve been wracking my brain trying to find out what the hell happened,” he told me. “I know he was high — higher than I’d seen him before.”
Meyer’s toxicology report showed a meth concentration of 1,400 nanograms per milliliter of blood, according to Gish’s court testimony.
His defense team’s expert witness, forensic toxicologist Sarah Urfer of Colorado, testified at trial that such a concentration could make a man “violent, erratic,” according to Gish.
Self Defense
At trial, Gish’s public defense attorney, Senior Public Defender Baend Buus, claimed self-defense.
It’s unclear whether that’s what led the jury to acquit Gish under all three theories proposed by the prosecutor, as the jury marked “not guilty” under each. The charges were voluntary manslaughter, involuntary manslaughter, and criminally negligent homicide.
Buus will accept whatever verdict the jurors reach.
“That’s the verdict that we hoped for and expected,” he told the Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “I think Joe is a great guy, and I think he’ll spend every day of the rest of his life appreciating the verdict he got from that jury.”
Gish stated that the jury was difficult to read throughout the week, and he had no idea what it would find. When he left his new Colorado home on Sunday to spend the week on trial in Cheyenne, he said he said goodbye to several family members and all five of his cats, just in case.
Looking back, he speculates that the jury came to regard him as sympathetic.
“I think they (prosecutors) wanted to paint me out as just like a killer without feeling,” according to him. “It didn’t work because I have empathy for Greg.”
He expressed sympathy for Meyer’s daughter and stated that he will be affected by the man’s death for the rest of his life.
“The last thing I wanted was for his life to be ended that night,” says Gish. “I wanted his daughter to be able to enjoy time with him, just like my daughter enjoys time with me.”
On Monday, the Laramie County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak did not immediately respond to a voicemail message seeking comment.
Lisa Gish, who had told deputies that Joseph Gish was approaching with the knife, did not immediately respond to a Monday text message request for comment sent to the phone number on file.
