Propublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates power abuse. Sign up for Dispatches. This is a newsletter that spotlights misconduct across the country, and receives your stories in your inbox every week.
Idaho lawmakers are making modest efforts to improve the state’s system to investigate deaths, following reports from others who have identified key issues, such as Propublica. At the same time, the county is moving from the public view records that ProPublica relied on its coverage to the shield.
“As before today, it’s a bill that’s coming for a long time, and there have been attempts to reform our coroner system for decades since the 1950s,” Sen. Melissa Windrow told lawmakers on February 26th, nodding to Propublica’s report last year.
The Democratic bill will spell out new parameters that clarify the role of the coroner. If the current law requires an investigation of “suspecting” deaths, the bill lists situations such as suspected drug overdose and job deaths. Law enforcement investigations also replace coroner investigations, revealing that the two should occur in parallel. It should be done by a forensic pathologist, not by another type of physician.
The law crossed the first hurdle passed last week with widespread support in the Republican-controlled Idaho Senate.
Wintrow said the coroner’s investigation must be done correctly.
“If you’ve seen some of the news reports recently, there are families who are upset because we haven’t done this consistently across the state,” she told lawmakers.
What we see
During Donald Trump’s second presidency, Propovica will focus on areas that need scrutiny. Below are some of the issues reporters watch, and how to safely communicate with them.
We are doing something new. Helpful?
A report commissioned last year by Idaho lawmakers highlights the flaws in the system of elected coroners (a system dating back to the 19th century). The report said Idaho is ranked last among the states for performing autopsies on suspicious, unexpected and unnatural child deaths.
Propublica later reported on the experiences of two grief parents with the coroner who conducted little investigation to determine the cause of the baby’s death. Propublica also used legislative and newspaper archives to identify many warnings about the Idaho coroner system, failing to attempt to go back more than 70 years.
The difference this time is that the coroner, a group that opposed past efforts, drafted the law introduced by Wintrow. Work has been underway since the February 2024 state report by the Idaho Legislature’s Office of Performance Assessment, which aims at the coroner’s system.
However, the proposed law does not address some of the important issues identified by state watchdogs or Propublica investigations.
Propublica’s review of hundreds of Idaho Coroner’s reports showed little consistency in what the Coroner did to investigate each death. Some coroners followed national standards. Others didn’t. Some orderly autopsy in sudden infant deaths and unexpected child deaths. Others didn’t. Other states write about the types of deaths that require an autopsy each time.
Idaho requires 24 hours of training every two years, but Propublica has found that there is a repeated shortage of one in four coroner. Other states impose results to skip the required training.
Wintrow eased expectations about a rapid overhaul. She said her bill is not intended to be comprehensive. She called it a starting point supported by the Idaho Kotonata Society.
“Is this the end, all the bills? No, but it’s the best start we’ve had and it will increase the consistency of our state,” she said on the Senate floor.
Meanwhile, the hearing on Wintrow’s proposal sparked the county’s attempt to wall the medical examiner’s records from public places in Idaho.
One man testified that his teenage daughter, who had epilepsy, died while bathing, and that his grief had worsened by knowing that he had a photograph taken in an investigation into her death. In response, Windrow said he asked the Idaho Coroner and the Sheriff’s Association how to keep such material secret.
(The court held that the dead were not entitled to the same personal privacy protections as their livelihoods, but the U.S. Supreme Court decision found that the privacy interests of survivors justified withholding autopsy images from the public.)
It turns out the Idaho County Association had a legislation ready. But rather than simply protecting the body photographs, the proposal would ensure that the entire coroner’s investigation is exempt from the Public Records Act. The public is the name, age, gender, homeland and cause of death, not for the underlying staircase coroner to reach a conclusion.
Onyx, son of Diamond and Alexis Cooley, went to sleep in eastern Idaho in February 2024. Records from the coroner’s investigation revealed that little work was done before the coroner concluded that Onyxx was victim of a sudden infant death syndrome. Credit: Natalie Behing from Propublica
The idea comes from the coroner of Ada County, Boise’s home base, according to the association. ADA County Coroner Rich Riffle told Propublica that county lawyers drafted a proposal based on Riffle’s goal of treating coroners more like law enforcement records.
Police records are available for public testing in Idaho, with exceptions such as when police are still actively investigating crimes and publishing records.
“We are independent of law enforcement, but that doesn’t mean we want to put criminal cases at risk. It’s essentially the bottom line,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Last year’s state watchdog report also recommended that lawmakers consider not to interfere with criminal cases or violate family privacy by ensuring disclosure of medical examiners’ records. It was not specified to create a wide range of bans.
ADA County initially rejected Propublica’s request last year for a coroner’s investigation record of the death of a child, where Idaho is performing particularly low speed autopsies. Similar records requests were sent to nine other states of Idaho.
After months of negotiations, ADA County began offering a heavily compiled record after Propublica agreed to pay more than $880.
In Bonneville County, which resisted disclosure, such records revealed that the coroner failed to comply with national standards. For example, the death of Onyxx Cooley, two months old, was determined to be a sudden infant death after a one-page report and autopsy. Since then, retired coroner Rick Taylor, pointed out that state law does not set standards for investigations, saying it relies on the opinions of emergency physicians.
Most coroners approached by Propublica have released records after compiling information that lawyers said was protected by state law. Photos were not included.
When lending support for exempting coroner records from disclosure last fall, the county association wrote: Nearly relatives can also be harmed by the release of personal medical information from loved ones and the confidential information surrounding the circumstances of their death. Given these rights, there is limited public value in the disclosure of details in someone’s death. ”
Internal note: senior USAID leaders warned Trump appointees of hundreds of thousands of deaths from the closure agency
Wintrow saw the draft bill at this year’s legislative meeting and agreed to sponsor it. However, the future of the bill is uncertain.
After asking questions from Propublica about last week’s bill, Wintrow and the county lobbyists said they wanted to revisit the law before they could move forward.
Wintrow said he hopes the coroner will be treated like a law enforcement agency when it comes to public records law law.
“My intention as a lawmaker is to make sure there’s a good balance with everything, to make sure that privacy is maintained and the interests of the public are maintained,” Wintrow told Propublica last week.
“We’ve seen you get a lot of money,” said Kelly Brasfield, a lobbyist with the County Association. “After some discussion, it appears that the language needs to be revised. I’m currently working on this.”
