Suicides highlight apathy, lack of accountability at this Idaho jail

CALDWELL (InvestigateWest) — By the time Tim Riley’s lifeless body was discovered in a shower at the Canyon County jail, the deputy assigned to keep his unit safe hadn’t seen him in an hour and nine minutes.

Deputy Joshua Barnett conducted three security checks of Riley’s dorm during that time, but he failed to account for Riley during each check. At 3:30 p.m. on June 23, 2023, Barnett entered the dorm, walked its perimeter and exited in less than a minute, neglecting to check the bathroom where Riley had just taken a knotted bedsheet, jail video shows. Jail policy required deputies to “physically observe all inmates for well-being” at least every 20 minutes.

Twenty-four minutes later, Barnett performed another security check. He again failed to look inside the bathroom.

And 29 minutes after that, Riley was still unaccounted for when Barnett performed a third security check.

Riley’s death was the first of three suicides in eight months at the jail, located in Idaho’s second-most populous county, just west of Boise. Detainee Michael Garrett died one week after Riley. And seven months after that, Cory Ferguison died there, too.

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The deaths highlight a lack of accountability and oversight for the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, which neglected to scrutinize its own jail policies and staff performance as detainee suicides added up.

Investigators with the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office — the same agency that runs the jail — initiated criminal investigations focused on ruling out homicide. But an InvestigateWest analysis of jail policies, video footage and investigative files has found that staff violated internal safety protocols that could have prevented Riley’s and Garrett’s deaths. The sheriff’s office would not release records related to Ferguison’s death because it remains under criminal investigation.

More than 300 pages of investigative records provided by the sheriff’s office contain no evidence of policy or staff performance reviews — an oversight that experts say could leave critical safety gaps unaddressed and put other inmates at risk.

When asked whether policy or staff actions were evaluated, Joe Decker, a spokesman for the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office, said in an email that internal reviews are conducted following all deaths. But the agency refused to clarify what is assessed during internal reviews or to confirm whether such reviews were conducted following the deaths of Riley and Garrett. In the documents that were provided, there is also no mention of corrective measures like staff training, facility improvements or disciplinary action following their deaths.

In fact, the jail loosened its policy on detainee safety checks early last year, nearly tripling the amount of time a detainee could go unsupervised, matching the Idaho Sheriff’s Association recommendation. More frequent checks should be conducted at least every 30 minutes for detainees who are are suicidal, according to the state guidelines.

After a coroner confirmed that Riley and Garrett died by suicide, investigators closed the cases.

“They try to launder the legal liability through a criminal investigation and then say, ‘There’s no crime here, nothing to see here, look away,'” said Jason Wood, an Idaho Falls attorney who represents detainees and their families. “They’re very careful not to admit that anything was done wrong because they’re less likely to be held responsible if they don’t admit it.”

The response by Canyon County exemplifies broader concerns shared by national experts who say law enforcement is apathetic toward preventing suicides in jail. Suicides are the leading cause of death for jail detainees in Idaho and nationwide, but agencies like the Canyon County Sheriff’s Office have declined to implement training, developed by health care providers and law enforcement, meant to reduce these deaths.

“These are not just criminals locked behind a door,” said Gary Cornelius, a retired Virginia-based jail deputy who trains detention staff in suicide prevention. “They’re people with problems, and as an officer you have a moral obligation and you took an oath to care for these people. That means keeping them free from harm like victimization, but also to keep them safe from themselves.”

The hard questions

Seven days before he died, Parma Police pulled over Riley’s wife for an expired vehicle registration. Riley, who was in the passenger seat, was arrested on a year-old warrant for failing to appear in court.

Riley grew up in small, agricultural towns outside Boise. He was the fourth of eight boys and a generally happy child, his parents said, though symptoms of two behavioral health disorders sometimes caused defiant and angry outbursts.

Riley was 13 the first time he was arrested for being out past curfew, said his mom, Robin Riley.

In his teens, a relative introduced Tim Riley to methamphetamine. He became addicted and started stealing to pay for his habit, his mom said. Riley served time in juvenile detention for theft, driving without a license and other misdemeanors, court records show. And he spent nearly five years of his adult life behind bars for possession of marijuana, stealing tools, assaulting another inmate and probation violations.

Riley was 31 when he was arrested during the traffic stop in Parma in June 2023. His family couldn’t afford to bail him out of jail. Five days after he was locked up, Riley called home. But this wasn’t the typical call checking up on his kids, Riley’s wife, Paula, said. He sounded depressed, even suicidal.

Paula Riley called the jail and asked them to put her husband on suicide watch. When questioned by a deputy, Tim Riley said he was fine “but was on the verge of crying,” according to jail records. A mental health provider also assessed him, noting that Riley should meet with another provider to “re-start anti-depressant medications,” records show. The provider cleared him without recommending increased supervision. He took his life the next day.

Video footage and investigative records reveal that Riley had attempted suicide less than two hours before his death. At 2:08 p.m., he pulled the sheet from his bed, wrapped it in a towel and carried it to the bathroom. Riley abandoned the attempt when he fell in the shower and another detainee, unaware of his intent, asked if he was OK. Riley returned to the dorm, where an hour and 20 minutes later, he tied the sheet into knots, wrapped it in a towel again, and headed back to the bathroom. This time, he never returned.

Riley was the third of his brothers to die by suicide. Four others are incarcerated in Idaho on drug and theft charges.

Investigators reviewed hours of video footage from the day Riley died and noted his movements to the second. The video notes included no mention of Barnett’s security checks. Also among the investigative files is an electronic log of when Barnett started and ended each check. According to those times, he spent three to five minutes each time ensuring the detainees were safe. But video footage reviewed by InvestigateWest reveals that each of Barnett’s checks lasted less than a minute.

Barnett and investigators did not respond to interview requests.

Investigators never questioned the discrepancy, according to their files. Barnett still works at the jail.

“If I was investigating a jail suicide, I wouldn’t just ask if it’s a criminal act,” Cornelius said. “You can’t prevent every suicide unfortunately, but these deaths are preventable if we’re willing to ask the hard questions: Why wasn’t this person provided the care they needed, and what can we do next time?”

Lack of oversight

In the past five years, at least 13 people have died by suicide while in the custody of an Idaho jail. Canyon and Kootenai County jails had the most, with three suicides each.

Idaho doesn’t require jails to report or investigate the deaths of detainees. Best practices developed by national corrections and health experts recommend an independent audit following every death.

“We’re not treating these human beings as well as cattle. At least we make sure cattle are fed.”

One week after Riley’s death, Michael Garrett, 40, was found dead in a cell by Canyon County jail guards. Garrett was arrested on allegations of rape and assault and died three days after being booked into a high-security risk unit. In the hour before his body was discovered, deputies conducted two security checks, six cell searches and picked up meal trays in Garrett’s unit, according to jail logs. Yet, when investigators questioned one of the deputies overseeing the unit, he could not recall the last time he checked on Garrett.

On Feb. 1, 2024, Cory Ferguison, like Riley, died after using a sheet to hang himself in a shower at the Canyon County jail, according to records. Ferguison was booked into jail on allegations of burglary, stalking and violating a protection order. A criminal investigation into his death is underway.

Wood, who has been representing detainees and families for more than 20 years, said he’s seen “patterns like this over and over again, all over the state of Idaho.” As state lawmakers expand criminal sentences, jails fill up but don’t have staff to keep detainees safe, he said.

Money is tight, especially in rural communities, and taking care of criminals isn’t a priority even though jails have an obligation to do so, Wood said.

“We’re not treating these human beings as well as cattle,” Wood said. “At least we make sure cattle are fed. We’re treating these people worse than animals when we don’t uphold those constitutional responsibilities.”

Idaho lacks mandatory jail standards ensuring the health and safety of prisoners and staff. Even voluntary standards crafted by the Idaho Sheriffs’ Association lack guidance for investigating or reviewing inmate deaths. And the Canyon County jail’s own policies, which are modeled after the state standards, include no provisions regarding mortality reviews.

Sheriffs can ask the Idaho State Police to investigate a detainee death. But that’s rare, said Jack Catlin, a detective who recalled only three of those investigations in his 30 years with the Idaho State Police. And those detectives are limited to criminal investigations, Catlin said.

“We treat it like any other homicide,” Catlin said. “We would document it in a report if someone didn’t do their rounds on time or something like that, but we don’t delve into the policy violations. We leave that up to the agency.”

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In eastern Idaho, investigators are called in from neighboring counties when someone dies in jail custody. But most sheriffs, like Canyon County’s recently re-elected Kieran Donahue, rely on their own investigators to identify faulty policies and call out wrongdoing among their peers.

Donahue refused to answer questions about these investigations. But during an interview in September 2024, when asked how the jail responds to detainee deaths, Donahue told InvestigateWest that “if there’s personnel that didn’t do their checks adequately, and I’m being hypothetical, then that becomes a personnel matter, and I can’t disclose that. But they’re reprimanded. It’s just not open to the public because of the sensitivity.”

Idaho law does require elected county commissioners, who determine budgets for the sheriff’s office, to visit their local jail four times a year. There is no mention of the detainees dying in Canyon County’s inspection reports from 2023 or 2024. A spokesman for the commissioners said the elected officials receive reports of deaths from the jail, when they’re voluntarily submitted to the state, which typically include one or two sentences about what happened. None of the commissioners responded to calls or emails from InvestigateWest about the detainee deaths.

Some other states require mortality reviews when someone dies in the custody of a jail. In Washington, independent committees consisting of representatives from the department of health, office of corrections, local law enforcement and jail staff investigate all unexpected jail deaths and produce public reports on their findings and recommendations. Jails in Oklahoma are required to report every death to the State Department of Health triggering an inspection to identify policy violations or improvements.

Without those reviews, Idaho lacks the transparency and accountability to prevent future deaths, said Hernandez Stroud, who teaches about mass incarceration as a public health crisis at Columbia University and studies litigation ensuring humane treatment for prisoners at the Brennan Center for Justice.

“It may be that we’re not seeing consequences in these cases because the treatment of people behind bars does not score high on the public agenda,” Stroud said. “No one is getting elected based on how well or how poorly they’re treating people in a correctional facility, so it’s not just a lack of accountability but also of public concern. It’s just not a priority.”

In his September interview, Sheriff Donahue told InvestigateWest that litigation offers a path forward for detainees or family members who feel that the jail is failing to protect their loved ones. Lawsuits, he said, are a mechanism for holding sheriffs and counties accountable for what is happening to detainees on their watch.

But Paula Riley said the jail left her in the dark after her husband’s death limiting her options for recourse.

Independent reviews could provide families like hers with the information they need to hold the jail accountable in civil court.

“I tried to get an attorney to take the case, but all we knew was that he committed suicide, and so they said they didn’t have a case,” Paula Riley said. “If we had known all of this, all of the details about the checks and guards not doing their job, then maybe we could have done that and gotten some closure. Or maybe they would have changed something and taken it more seriously next time.”

This report was supported in part by a grant from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. InvestigateWest (investigatewest.org) is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reporter Whitney Bryen covers injustice and vulnerable populations, including mental health care, homelessness and incarceration. Reach her at (208) 918-2458, whitney@invw.org, on Signal and on X @WhitneyBryen.

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