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By Audrey Dutton
Idaho is taking steps to bolster its antiquated coroner system following stories by ProPublica that documented how lawmakers have repeatedly failed to fix problems that harm grieving families.
An advisory panel created last year at the request of Gov. Brad Little is developing legislation to require autopsies in a variety of circumstances, including the unexplained death of a child. It would help coroners pay for those autopsies as long as they get a national certification that proves they can meet certain standards.
The legislation would mimic a similar setup in neighboring Washington. An increase in fees on Idaho death certificates would finance the autopsy reimbursements.
A ProPublica review of hundreds of death records in 2024 found that some coroners failed to meet national standards when investigating child and infant deaths, and a state oversight report found Idaho ranked last in the U.S. for autopsies when children or infants died unexpectedly.
The state Office of Performance Evaluations cited poor funding as a major problem.
ProPublica’s examination of training records for Idaho coroners also revealed that many failed to get the hours of continuing education required by state law. Further reporting in 2025 examined how potentially suspicious deaths can slip through the cracks of Idaho’s poorly funded system.
The committee working on the legislation includes seven county coroners and a deputy coroner; representatives of city, county and state law enforcement agencies; a deputy county prosecutor; a county commissioner and a tribal member.
Kelli Brassfield, co-chair of the panel and a lobbyist who represents Idaho’s county governments, cautioned that the proposal likely won’t be ready during the 2026 annual legislative session.
But this is the first time in decades that coroners and other local and state officials have agreed on a path forward to improve Idaho’s system for investigating death.
Idaho’s death investigation system is almost entirely funded by counties, and county officials have fought past efforts to require autopsies, which can cost thousands of dollars apiece.
At the committee’s meeting in January, Brent Mendenhall, a commissioner from Madison County, was enthusiastic about the draft legislation and the push for more autopsies.
“When I hear that a commission or any county has turned down an autopsy, it just makes me shudder,” Mendenhall said at the meeting. “I just think, ‘What are you doing to that family that doesn’t know what happened?’”
Series timeline
- July 16, 2025: Clayton Strong showed up at an Idaho hospital in 2016 with his wife’s body in the car. A coroner took his word for what happened to her. Years later, Strong was charged with murdering his next wife.
- March 5, 2025: A bill moving through the Idaho legislature made modest changes to the coroner’s system by clarifying the coroner’s role.
- Dec. 2, 2024: We reported on decades of calls for reform to Idaho’s coroner system. Lawmakers came close to instituting change a few times, but each of these efforts collapsed.
- Nov. 11, 2024: Two-month-old Onyxx Cooley was born with a cleft palate but apparently otherwise healthy. One morning in 2024, his mother awakened to find him unresponsive. The coroner ordered no autopsy, didn’t go to the scene and didn’t interview the parents, steps prescribed by national guidelines.
- Feb. 20, 2024: An Idaho legislative committee heard a state report on the lack of oversight and support for county coroners. The report flagged Idaho’s low autopsy rate.
Mendenhall said that under the legislation being developed, coroners who have struggled with a small autopsy budget could approach their county commissioners and say, “Here’s the law, and you need to make sure that I can do this.”
The advisory panel working on legislation is co-chaired by Sen. Melissa Wintrow, a Boise Democrat. Wintrow said ProPublica’s reporting raised awareness of the harms done by a faulty system for death investigations.
“Here’s the system going wrong, and your reporting shines a light on it,” she said.
Bingham County Coroner Jimmy Roberts, a member of the panel, told ProPublica that Wintrow has said repeatedly that one of the motivators to get something done about Idaho’s coroner system is that “she doesn’t want to see the coroner system in the media or in the news any longer.”
“I think that speaks volumes,” Roberts said.
Idaho’s governor said more than a year ago that he would support giving coroners more resources to do their jobs right. Lawmakers failed to take him up on it.
Wintrow won modest changes to the coroner’s system during the 2025 session with legislation that clarified the roles of coroners and law enforcement in death investigations.
Another development in the wake of ProPublica’s reporting is a newly created series of intensive courses for coroners, law enforcement officers and others around the state to learn how to handle child and infant deaths.
Funded by a grant from the Governor’s Children At Risk Task Force, the courses this spring will be the most in-depth training of its kind since 2019.
Roberts and Ada County Chief Deputy Coroner Brett Harding will lead the trainings: eight hours of virtual education for coroners statewide and in-person education for coroners in the Boise area and in eastern and northern Idaho.
Eastern Idaho is where an infant, Onyxx Cooley, died suddenly and unexpectedly in February 2024. His mother, Alexis Cooley, found him cold and lifeless and called for help, but the baby couldn’t be revived.
Reports released to ProPublica by the coroner who was legally responsible for figuring out why the baby died showed that he did not follow national guidelines. He did not speak with the parents, examine the baby’s body or the scene of the death to search for clues or order an autopsy.
That coroner, who has since retired, told ProPublica he spoke with law enforcement officers who responded to the infant’s death and relied on the emergency physician who examined the baby’s body to decide what caused his death.
Alexis Cooley told ProPublica that she hoped the death of her baby would not be in vain, and that sharing his story with the public could set in motion some positive change.
She began to cry when she learned that coroners are working on legislation to improve Idaho’s last-in-the-nation autopsy rate for unexplained child deaths, and that first responders and coroners around the state will get specialized education to handle those cases.
“I’m glad that through my pain and suffering that it’s hopefully lessening the burden on other parents, when a situation like this happens again,” Cooley said. “And it’s amazing that they’re going to be able to get answers and that Onyxx’s case was heard.”
Wintrow, meanwhile, said her committee members’ willingness to work together on a solution to problems is encouraging, but that progress is slow and piecemeal in a system with no centralized state agency to develop public policy for coroners.
She is working on a pitch to get Idaho a full-time coordinator to fill a role that she has played as a part-time legislator.
Originally published by ProPublica.
Audrey Dutton is a reporter for ProPublica in the Northwest, based in Idaho.
