Idaho jails withhold details about dozens of inmate deaths

(InvestigateWest) — As soon as her husband hung up the phone, Paula Riley called the Canyon County Jail and begged a deputy to put him on suicide watch.

Riley’s husband, Tim, was arrested last year on a warrant for failing to show up to court on year-old charges. He called home often to talk to his wife and kids. But five days after he was locked up, the conversation changed.

“He was really sad and was saying he was a failure and, ‘You and the kids deserve better, and you should give up on me and leave me,’” Riley said. “Then he said, ‘I love you, remember that,’ and hung up. I knew something was wrong.”

A deputy told Riley that they checked on Tim and he said he was fine. But Riley kept calling, asking staff to check again. She even convinced Tim to ask to see a mental health provider. He told her he filled out a request.

Two days after she first called, Tim hanged himself in the shower.

Riley said the jail never called to tell her.

There were no press conferences. No news coverage. No social media posts. No statements from jail officials or the sheriff. No notifications that a man had died on their watch.

Nor was there any public notification three months earlier, when Twin Falls jail deputies discovered Manuel Chavez-Rodriguez face down on a bed, lifeless. Or this June, when Kootenai County Jail deputies delivered breakfast to detainees and found Gary Neff dead.

In the last five years, Idaho jails have left the public in the dark regarding dozens of deaths of detainees in their care, according to an InvestigateWest review of public records, announcements by officials and media coverage.

Some jails are failing to disclose any details to the public. Others are refusing to report them to the state. Even when Idaho jails do submit a report, few details are provided and investigations into what happened are voluntary.

In 2019, Congress lifted the requirement that jails report deaths to the U.S. Department of Justice. Instead, states are now required to report them to the federal government. As a result, many states passed laws requiring jails to continue reporting deaths. But Idaho didn’t, leaving behind a shroud of secrecy. It’s one of 20 states that rely on voluntary disclosure of deaths by jail officials.

Since 2019, counties have voluntarily reported 32 deaths to the Idaho State Police, which manages the state’s data. That’s a likely undercount since jails may choose not to notify the state, experts say. In August, the Bonneville County sheriff announced that a 43-year-old man died in jail, but has yet to submit the details of his death to the state. And in October 2022, local media reported that a 52-year-old woman died at the Boundary County Jail, but her death is still not captured in the state database even after the State Police investigated at the jail’s request.

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The state database has no record of anyone dying in an Idaho jail in 2022.

And while it’s unclear how many jails chose not to alert the agency when someone died, those that did submit voluntary reports provided scarce information. Some described what happened in less than one sentence and with few specifics, omitting details that could help prevent future deaths.

In one report, the description states: “Subject hung himself in the shower with a sheet.” Another read: “Subject hung himself in his cell with a T-shirt.”

InvestigateWest searched for information about deaths reported to the state in the past year and a half. Six of the 13 deaths were kept hidden from the public by county officials, with no statement or notification issued, InvestigateWest has found.

Sheriffs and local jail leaders say details need to be withheld from the public to protect the integrity of voluntary investigations and the privacy of victims and their families. But most jails aren’t releasing information even after investigations are complete and families have been notified.

“If something major happens in the jail, we would want the public to know,” said Capt. Jeremy Hyle, who runs the Kootenai County Jail. “But we’re not required by any statute or anything to tell anybody.”

Gary Raney, who oversaw Idaho’s largest jail for a decade as Ada County sheriff, said his office notified the public of every death through the website, social media or press conferences. Now a jail compliance officer, he stopped short of criticizing current sheriffs, but he said the public has a right to know when someone dies in jail.

“There may or may not be bad practices found and certainly, if there are criminal offenses, then those should come forward,” Raney said. “But if nothing else, let’s take the opportunity to look at what happened and try to learn from it so we can prevent the next one.”

National experts on deaths behind bars say some officials are more concerned with the political ramifications of having blood on their hands than improving the health and safety of the people in their jails — two-thirds of whom are presumed innocent and have not been convicted, according to a Harvard study.

Experts and state law enforcement say that documenting these cases, at a time when jail deaths are increasing nationwide, provides critical oversight and allows for the public scrutiny necessary to enforce change and improve the treatment of people detained in local jails.

David Janovsky, a death-in-custody policy analyst for a nonpartisan nonprofit called the Project on Government Oversight, said in states without reporting mandates, jails may avoid submitting information because it’s time-consuming, could draw additional questions or could result in stricter policies.

“When deaths occur, they represent such a failure, that agencies should be trying to figure out what went wrong, regardless of mandates,” Janovsky said. “It should not take financial penalties or incentives to make a facility or agency provide basic information about a death. If that’s the calculation, it reflects a deeper failure to take responsibility for the people under their care.”

“We’re talking about human lives here.”

What the public wants to know

The Kootenai County Jail has reported three deaths to the state this year. No information was provided to the public for any of them.

Over the past decade, the jail has reported six deaths, according to federal and state data.

Bret Clausing was arrested for indecent exposure on New Year’s Eve, court records show. He died by suicide at the Kootenai County Jail the next day. The 55-year-old removed a medical tube from his body that was providing treatment for an undisclosed condition, according to the report submitted to the state. Deputies and medical staff performed “life saving measures,” the report states. It does not state whether Clausing was in a medical unit, how long his tube was out before help arrived or how jail staff responded. Nor does it mention the results of a local police investigation into his death, whether any policies were ignored or efforts to prevent future deaths.

On the morning of June 6, deputies found Gary Neff “unresponsive and cold,” according to a state report. He had been taken three days earlier to the hospital, where he spent one night before being released and taken back to jail. The coroner determined that the 43-year-old died of natural causes. The specific causes were redacted from the report. He had been in jail for four months for violating his probation, according to court records. A blood test found three medications that are used to treat anxiety disorders, seizures and alcohol withdrawal.

Fewer than three weeks later, Jeremiah Barnett died of a fentanyl overdose. He had been arrested four days earlier on a misdemeanor for possessing drug paraphernalia, court records show. He was 36.

Hyle, who runs Idaho’s second most populated jail, said there is no process for when or how to notify the community when someone dies. He said the decision is made by jail officials on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s up to us as an agency to determine if it’s something the public wants to know,” Hyle said.

When asked why the public would not want to know about a death in the jail, he said he would notify the public if the jail could be held liable in someone’s death. Yet, the public wouldn’t know about those deaths unless the county told them.

“We’re not hiding anything from the public by not telling them,” Hyle said. “We’re just trying to balance the sanctity of these investigations and public trust. We want to do better, and we want to be transparent.”

Most states have laws requiring jails to submit a report when someone in their care dies. Those laws don’t require jails to communicate deaths directly to their community. But the reports and follow-up investigations are public records.

Idaho’s voluntary death reports are publicly available through the State Police, though most include sparse detail and are heavily redacted excluding information such as the cause of death.

Those state reports also feed a national database that’s vital to preventing future deaths. Michael Planty studies jail deaths and best practices for reducing them at the nonprofit Research Triangle Institute International. He says jails nationwide are becoming more dangerous — proof that more information and scrutiny is needed.

From 2000 to 2019, the number of people nationwide who died in jail custody jumped 33%, according to the most recent federal data. In 2019, 1,200 people died.

More than three-quarters of them were not convicted.

Planty said the politics surrounding sheriffs and jail officials often lead them to prioritize public image over critical examination that could improve safety and reduce deaths.

“What you’re seeing is some jails are more worried about how they’ll look if they report a death, and they assume, as the public, you don’t understand the context or circumstances if they do tell you about it. So, they don’t,” Planty said. “But that erodes trust with the families and the communities and makes it hard to address the problem.”

In states with mandated reporting, the death of a jail detainee often triggers an inspection by the state to determine whether jail employees followed protocol and whether a criminal investigation is needed. Results of an investigation, and whether any action was taken to improve jail conditions or discipline staff, are public record.

Idaho doesn’t require inspections or investigations following a detainee death. Jails typically request investigations from local police or neighboring sheriff’s deputies. The results of those probes are public records available through the investigating agency.

Hyle said local police in Coeur d’Alene investigate every death at the jail. The jail also conducts an internal review to determine whether staff followed policies and procedures, and if any changes should occur.

Police found no wrongdoing in these cases, and no disciplinary action or changes took place as a result of those deaths, Hyle said.

Many jail deaths remain a ‘mystery’

The rate of people in Idaho jails who die behind bars exceeds the national average, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’ most recent data. Though the data is considered an undercount, it’s the only information available for all 50 states about how many people died in jails. Compared with other states, Idaho’s jail death rate ranks 15th, rising above neighboring states to the south and east, while Washington, Nevada and Oregon have higher rates.

Four men, including Tim Riley, died in the care of the Canyon County jail between January 2023 and February 2024, according to reports that the jail submitted to Idaho State Police. Three of them died by suicide. One died from an overdose.

The reports included no more than two sentences describing what happened. There are no details about who found the men, the condition they were in, or what was done to help them.

The sheriff’s office put out a press release announcing that it was investigating a death last January, but it did not provide a name or details. The sheriff and jail officials did not notify the public about the other three deaths.

“I don’t want this to happen to someone else.”

Canyon County Sheriff Kieran Donahue described an approach to transparency similar to Kootenai County’s and said suicides are almost never announced to the public. Suicides account for more than half of the deaths in Idaho’s jails, according to 10 years of federal data.

“The first thing that happens after a death is an investigation, so I’m limited on what I can or will give out because I owe it to the families and authorities to have a good investigation,” Donahue said. “So, if it seems like a mystery in the beginning, it’s because I’m not going to taint the integrity of the investigation until we get through the due process.”

When asked why the deaths were not disclosed after the investigations were complete, Donahue said “out of sympathy for the family.”

Paula Riley said she wants answers and for the public to know what happened to her husband.

Canyon County jail officials withheld details from Riley, who learned of Tim’s death from his mother.

More than a year after his death, the jail still hasn’t answered any of Riley’s questions about what happened.

“They won’t tell me anything, so that automatically seems bad,” Riley said. “I’d rather have everyone know about it because then maybe (jail officials) would care enough to answer for what happened and really look at what went wrong. I don’t want this to happen to someone else.”

Goodwill isn’t enough

A lack of direction from the state has led to a patchwork of philosophies about providing or restricting public access to information.

That inconsistency puts the state at risk of violating a 24-year-old federal law, which could trigger the loss of millions of dollars in grant funding that supports law enforcement agencies, jails and victim services.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act seeks to track and analyze the deaths of people detained by police, prisons and jails. Janovsky, who studies federal law, said state laws have become crucial to tracking detainee deaths since Congress saddled states with the responsibility to report. If states don’t comply with the mandate, the federal government can withhold grant funding that supports law enforcement, jails and victim services. But it never has.

The Idaho State Police are responsible for submitting the federal reports for each person who died in law enforcement custody. In lieu of state requirements, the agency sends quarterly email reminders to jails that “encourage participation,” according to an agency implementation plan.

Thomas Strauss manages the death reports and grants funding for the Idaho State Police and said the agency is committed to accurate reporting to ensure the state doesn’t lose vital grant money.

Last year, a legislative review of the law concluded that thousands of deaths nationwide were never reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and that jails deaths are reported less often now than when the mandate was first passed more than two decades ago.

Most Idaho jails voluntarily report deaths, Strauss said. Staff search for media coverage of deaths that were not reported by jails to fill in the gaps. Strauss said the agency has identified as many as 10 unreported deaths through media coverage since it began collecting the data five years ago. All of those jails submitted reports after being contacted by the agency, he said.

The state police can withhold grant funding from local agencies that don’t report. That has never happened.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice hired a research team led by Planty to analyze the flawed federal data. The group interviewed about 90 jail staff at 10 facilities nationwide, including commanders, deputies and medical staff, Planty said.

“I think most of these jails are operating on a need-to-know basis,” Planty said. “It’s an issue of trust that runs both ways. They’re thinking, ‘My budget’s already terrible, and I’m 30% understaffed and overcrowded already, and now you’re going to come in and criticize my operation without the proper context?’ But it’s that thinking that causes the public mistrust, so it’s a cycle that someone has to break.”

Lawsuits are one way to force change. But they take time and money that many families don’t have. Recent wrongful death lawsuits have resulted in massive payouts to families in Oklahoma and California, elevating discussions about jail oversight and standards for medical care inside jails.

State lawmakers can force consistency in reporting, transparency and accountability for deaths and other critical incidents through legislation.

Janovsky pointed to Texas as a strong example of transparency. Law enforcement agencies statewide, including jails, are required to report deaths to the Texas Attorney General’s Office, which publishes a database online.

Without a policy on the horizon in Idaho, it’s up to sheriffs, jail officials and local elected leaders to improve transparency and welcome scrutiny of detainee deaths.

“Public shame is, frankly, a meaningful consequence, and so making people aware of what’s happening and letting them ask questions at the local level is important,” Janovsky said. “That local pressure combined with state and federal pressure is ultimately how you create the change.

“It’s not going to be easy to change that culture,” he said, “but, again, we’re talking about human lives here, so we have to try.”

InvestigateWest is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Reach reporter Whitney Bryen covers injustice and vulnerable populations, including mental health care, homelessness and incarceration. Reach her at (208) 918-2458, whitney@invw.org and on X @WhitneyBryen.