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Idaho lawmakers are moving forward with modest efforts to improve the state’s system for investigating deaths, following reports by ProPublica and others that identified major problems. At the same time, counties are moving to shield from public view records that ProPublica relied on in its coverage.
“Before you today is a bill that is a long time coming, and I say that because over the course of decades, since the 1950s, there have been attempts to reform our coroner system,” state Sen. Melissa Wintrow told lawmakers on Feb. 26, in a nod to ProPublica reporting last year.
The Democrat’s bill would spell out new parameters that clarify a coroner’s role. Where current law says “suspicious” deaths should be investigated, the bill lists circumstances such as a suspected drug overdose or a death on the job. It also makes clear that a law enforcement investigation doesn’t take the place of a coroner’s investigation and that the two should happen in parallel. It requires autopsies to be done by a forensic pathologist, not another kind of doctor.
The legislation crossed its first hurdle last week when it passed in the Republican-controlled Idaho Senate with broad support.
Wintrow said coroners’ investigations must be done right.
“If you’ve seen some of the news reports lately, there are families that are upset because we have not consistently been doing this across our state,” she told lawmakers, “and it is imperative that we do that.”
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Last year, a report commissioned by Idaho lawmakers highlighted faults in a system of elected coroners — a system dating to the 19th century — that is marked by limited training, almost no state funding and an absence of statewide standards. The report noted that Idaho ranks last among states for conducting autopsies in suspicious, unexpected and unnatural child deaths.
ProPublica later reported on two grieving parents’ experience with a coroner who did little investigation to identify what caused their baby’s death. ProPublica also used legislative and newspaper archives to pinpoint numerous warnings about Idaho’s coroner system and failed attempts to reform it going back more than 70 years.
What’s different this time is that coroners, a group that has opposed past efforts, drafted the legislation that Wintrow introduced. It’s been in the works since the February 2024 state report, by the Idaho Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations, that took aim at the coroner system.
But the proposed legislation does not address some of the key problems identified by the state watchdog agency or ProPublica’s investigation.
ProPublica’s review of hundreds of Idaho coroner reports found little consistency in what coroners did to investigate each death. Some coroners followed national standards; others didn’t. Some ordered autopsies in sudden infant deaths and unexpected child deaths; others didn’t. Other states spell out types of deaths for which an autopsy is required every time.
Idaho requires only 24 hours of training every two years, but ProPublica found that 1 in 4 coroners repeatedly fell short. Other states impose consequences for skipping required training.
Wintrow has tempered expectations about a rapid overhaul, saying her bill is not meant to be comprehensive. She called it a starting point that has the support of the Idaho coroners association.
“Is this the end-all, be-all bill? No, but it is the best start we have had, and will increase consistency in our state,” she said on the Senate floor.
Meanwhile, hearings on Wintrow’s proposal triggered an attempt by counties to wall off coroners’ records from public view in Idaho.
One man testified that his teenage daughter, who had epilepsy, died while taking a bath and that his grief was compounded by knowing investigators possessed photographs taken in her death investigation. In response, Wintrow said she asked the Idaho coroners and sheriffs associations for a way to keep such materials private.
(Although courts have ruled that the dead aren’t entitled to the same personal privacy protections as the living, a U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that the privacy interests of survivors justified withholding autopsy images from the public.)
It turned out that the Idaho Association of Counties had a bill ready to go. But rather than simply protecting photographs of bodies, the proposal would make the entirety of a coroner’s investigation exempt from open records law. All the public could see would be a name, age, gender, hometown and cause of death — not the underlying steps coroners take to reach conclusions.
Credit:
Natalie Behring for ProPublica
According to the association, the idea came from the coroner of Ada County, home to Boise. Rich Riffle, the Ada County coroner, told ProPublica that a county attorney drafted the proposal based on Riffle’s goal to have Idaho treat coroner records more like law enforcement records.
Police records are available for public inspection in Idaho, with exceptions, such as when police are still actively investigating a crime and releasing their records could imperil the case.
“Although we are separate and independent from law enforcement, that doesn’t mean we want to jeopardize a criminal case, and that’s essentially the bottom line,” he said in an interview Wednesday.
Last year’s state watchdog report also recommended lawmakers consider ensuring disclosure of coroners’ records doesn’t impede a criminal case or violate a family’s privacy. It did not specify creating a broad ban.
Ada County initially denied ProPublica’s request last year for coroner investigative records on the deaths of children, for whom Idaho conducts autopsies at a particularly low rate. Similar record requests went to nine other Idaho counties.
After months of negotiation, Ada County began providing heavily redacted records once ProPublica agreed to pay more than $880 for them.
In Bonneville County, which also resisted disclosure, such records revealed the coroner’s failure to follow national standards. The death of 2-month-old Onyxx Cooley, for example, was determined to be a sudden infant death — one with no explanation — after a terse, one-page report and no autopsy. The since-retired coroner, Rick Taylor, noted that state law didn’t set standards for investigations and said that he relied on an emergency doctor’s opinion.
Most coroners approached by ProPublica released their records after attorneys redacted information they said was protected by state law. Photos weren’t included.
In lending its support to exempting coroner records from disclosure last fall, the association of counties wrote: “While a person may be deceased, their reputation is still subject to harm. Next of kin may also be subject to harm by the release of their loved one’s private medical information, and sensitive information surrounding the circumstances of their death. Given these rights, there is limited public value in the release of detailed information in someone’s death.”
Wintrow saw the draft bill during this year’s legislative session and agreed to sponsor it. But the bill’s future is uncertain.
After fielding questions from ProPublica about the bill last week, Wintrow and a lobbyist for the counties said they want to revisit the legislation before they move forward.
Wintrow said she wants coroners to be treated like law enforcement when it comes to open records laws.
“My intention always as a lawmaker is to make sure there’s good balance with everything, so that privacy is maintained and the interest of the public is maintained as well,” Wintrow told ProPublica last week.
Kelli Brassfield, a lobbyist for the counties association, said, “After some discussion, it looks like the language may need to be amended. We are currently working on this.”
