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A tweak to Idaho’s death investigation system is just the start. But to one parent, it’s not enough. • Idaho Capital Sun [1]
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Date: 2025-09-09
The night his daughter died, Allen Hodges said he didn’t know the law.
After Kylie, 16, was taking a while in the bath, he went in to check on her and found her unresponsive on Dec. 19, 2020.
He called 911 and started CPR. But he soon realized she’d had a tonic seizure, a more severe type that had been flaring up for Kylie, who had epilepsy.
Paramedics arrived. They tried to save her, then asked if they should keep going. Hodges said they shouldn’t.
Then a local sheriff’s deputy escorted him out of his house in Caldwell, which was apparently being treated as a crime scene even though he had told first responders about his daughter’s history with epilepsy.
After Kylie was declared dead, Hodges dressed her and carried her to a funeral home car, he recalled recently.
“I didn’t even have a chance to grieve that night,” Hodges said in an interview, sitting in his office next to a photo of his daughter, and a flower she drew on his whiteboard in his office.
Worried that nude photos of his dead daughter could be released publicly after a watchdog report found corner records aren’t confidential, Hodges pushed for a bill in the Legislature this year to clarify privacy protections for death investigation records. The bill, introduced late in the legislative session, stalled and didn’t pass.
But Sen. Melissa Wintrow, the Democratic state lawmaker from Boise who led that bill and a separate successful coroner reform law, said she plans to bring the privacy bill again next year. She’s working with local coroners on more fixes, like she did last year.
Years after Kylie died, Hodges said he’s fighting for his daughter’s dignity and other parents’ rights as he pursues reforms to Idaho’s troubled coroner system — in court and through the Legislature. He shared accounts of his daughter’s death investigation in interviews with the Idaho Capital Sun and in lawsuits he recently filed against Canyon County officials.
Officials won’t share, or delete photos, Canyon County prosecutor says
In the lawsuits, in which he’s representing himself, Hodges has asked courts to require local officials to destroy and give back what he claims are unwarranted, nude photos of his dead daughter, and compensate him for what he alleges are civil rights violations.
“People need to be aware that the process is not on a level playing field from county to county. And the state legislators need to fix the broken system,” he said.
Canyon County officials say an investigation into his daughter’s death — when no doctor was present — was warranted. And they say officials won’t release photos from the death investigation, but they won’t destroy them.
“The records with which Mr. Hodges is concerned are protected and will not be disclosed publicly,” Canyon County Prosecuting Attorney Christopher Boyd told the Sun in a letter in July. “… Unless authorized by law, reports related to unattended deaths are generally never destroyed and remain the property of the County’s investigatory law enforcement agencies. Thus, any requests to destroy investigatory records absent legal authority will be denied and those records preserved.”
A watchdog report that spurred the recent push to reform Idaho’s coroner system found that state law “does not prevent a coroner from sharing information” gathered in a death investigation. And it recommended lawmakers take up the issue to “lessen the chance of impeding a criminal investigation” and respect families’ privacy.
Kylie’s death was ruled natural, according to her death certificate.
As lawmakers worked to revamp Idaho’s coroner system, Hodges shared the story of his daughter’s death
In Idaho, coroners are an elected, county-level position, as outlined in the state’s constitution.
This spring — after a critical watchdog report in 2024 by the Office of Performance Evaluations found inconsistencies in death investigations across Idaho, driven by sparse guidance in state law — the Idaho Legislature widely passed into law a bill to clarify the roles of coroners and law enforcement in death investigations.
Debating in the Idaho Senate, Wintrow called the bill a first step that was “a long time coming.” She referenced decades of failed attempts to reform Idaho’s coroner system, which a ProPublica investigation last year detailed.
In February, when that bill was in its early stages, Hodges testified before a legislative committee about his daughter’s death — and the need for privacy protections for coroner records.
“After I did all the CPR (and) informed him of her epilepsy, the deputy coroner on the scene and the (detective) seized her medicine. They told me, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong, but that deputy is going to escort you outside of your house, and this has turned into a crime scene,’” Hodges, who serves as president of the Idaho Trucking Association but was appearing as a parent, told lawmakers.
“They took nude photos of my daughter,” he told the committee. “I have no control over those photographs at all — because there’s no law in Idaho.”
A U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2004 allows autopsy images to be withheld from public release. The watchdog report found information coroners gather in death investigations “is not considered confidential.”
The report, by the Office of Performance Evaluations, recommended the Legislature consider updating state law “to include regulations on confidentiality of information gathered by coroners in a death investigation”
Without a clear understanding about confidentiality requirements, “each coroner just kind of does their own thing,” Office of Performance Evaluations Director Ryan Langrill told the Sun.
“My read of the law is that there are no exemptions whatsoever, except for records that are protected through some secondary law,” such as privacy protections for personnel or police records, he said.
Last month, as law enforcement released troves of information from the investigation into a quadruple murder in Moscow, KTVB published blurred photos from the crime scene, which the outlet received through a public records request from local police. The Boise-based TV station was the only Idaho news outlet to publish the photos, and families were not notified before they were released, the Spokesman-Review reported.
KTVB could not be immediately reached for comment.
Idaho State Association of County Coroners President Torey Danner said Idaho doesn’t have many public record protections for coroner records. But he said he thinks that should change.
“Unfortunately, there just are certain things that I don’t believe need to be made public. One family’s tragedy should not be another family’s entertainment,” said Danner, who is also Bannock County’s coroner.
Late in the legislative session this year, Wintrow introduced another bill, Senate Bill 1135, that aimed to address Hodges’ privacy concerns. But she soon pulled the bill from consideration this year, realizing it went too far in concealing coroner records after an investigative journalist from ProPublica contacted her for a story on the bill.
In late 2024, ProPublica’s reporting highlighted gaps in Idaho’s coroner system. Then in March, the investigative news outlet reported that the privacy protection bill could “shield from public view records that ProPublica relied on in its coverage.”
“When you’re drafting a bill right in legislative session, when you’re being pulled in 1,000 directions, you could try to write something, and that’s what we did,” said Wintrow, a Boise Democrat who co-chairs the state’s Legislative Oversight Committee that ordered the state’s watchdog report on the coroner system.
But she soon realized it would make more records private than she wanted. “So that’s why I put the brakes on and said, ‘No, we don’t do bad legislation,’” Wintrow said.
She said she thinks the solution would be to treat coroner records like law enforcement records under the state’s Public Record Act, so journalists could still access some coroner records, but not all.
Hodges says he worries everyday about pictures of his daughter ending up online.
“Is that fair to a parent?” he told the Sun.
Online coroner training had nude photos of dead bodies. It’s no longer publicly available.
In April, before Hodges asked Canyon County to delete photos of his daughter, he found photos of nude and partially dressed dead people published online in a training for Idaho coroners on the Idaho Association of Counties’ website. The training on death investigation photography — which is no longer publicly available — credited Ada County for the presentation.
In May, when the Idaho Capital Sun contacted Ada County Coroner Rich Riffle about the photos, he said in an email he would address it immediately and that he didn’t review the presentation beforehand. The presentation was intended to be used professionally, not by the public, he said.
The Association of Counties made the training only available to coroners, the association’s policy adviser Kelli Brassfield told the Sun in an email.
Ada County doesn’t seek permission from families to use materials in presentations or use active cases, Riffle, the coroner, said.
“The great care taken is in the redaction of the photographs – to include such things as any family photos on a wall in the background,” he said. “… Even with this due diligence in redactions, our presenters make it clear up front that the attendees will see pictures that may be disturbing, and that they are local cases so there may be a chance someone will recognize the case even with all the details of any potential identifying images carefully redacted.”
The images in the training, reviewed by the Sun, showed two unredacted nude bodies. A female whose breasts were exposed had a block box over her eyes. Photos of a male, fully undressed on a gurney, did not appear to have redactions.
In May, Hodges asked Canyon County officials to delete photos of his daughter.
Boyd, the local prosecutor, told Hodges that when he talked to Canyon County Coroner Jennifer Crawford, she told him “her process would never be to release photos of any investigation under the Public Records Act.”
“In my discussion with the Coroner, she has assured me that she has not disclosed anything of a sensitive nature including photos which is not required by law,” Boyd wrote to Hodges, according to a copy of the letter the Sun obtained through a public records request. “I understand you have requested to have the photos of the autopsy provided to you and for the Coroner to not keep any of those images. I will reach out to her and forward your request.”
“Again, I am sorry for your loss and hope that the legislative changes you are requesting are ultimately adopted,” Boyd wrote at the end of the letter.
In June, Hodges filed a tort claim with the county, which is precursor to a lawsuit. Then he filed lawsuits against Canyon County law enforcement and coroner officials in state and federal courts. He is legally representing himself in the lawsuits.
Working with coroners and law enforcement, Idaho lawmakers are working toward more coroner legislation. But funding is a barrier.
Idaho’s new law clarifying death investigation roles only addressed some of the litany of recommendations in the watchdog report.
The report, nearly 100 pages, also found:
Idaho had the lowest autopsy rate in the nation for deaths of children and homicides, and the third lowest rate for death autopsies overall.
It’s unclear if coroners are even fulfilling the 24-hours of training required every two years.
State expenses for coroner offices was “a minor fraction of overall county budgets,” and many coroner offices’ ability to operate is hampered by lacking “essential resources and equipment.”
In the months after the legislative session ended in spring, Wintrow and other state lawmakers have been meeting with coroners and law enforcement as part of a work group to craft future legislation. One proposal the group has considered could require autopsies for children, Boise State Public Radio reported.
But to Wintrow, the biggest hurdle in addressing more of the watchdog report’s findings is figuring out how to fund coroner offices better. That’s where the Legislature can step in, especially to help smaller counties, Wintrow said.
But she wishes the Legislature wouldn’t have cut the state’s revenue so much this year, when lawmakers approved $400 million in tax cuts and $50 million in tax credits for parents who send their kids to private schools.
“That has put us in a pickle,” Wintrow said in July.
Last month, Idaho Gov. Brad Little ordered all state government agencies besides public schools to cut their budgets mid-year by 3% ahead of an $80 million projected budget shortfall. But the budget shortfall estimate didn’t account for tax cuts in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which could cost Idaho another $167 million to implement, the Sun reported.
In response to a follow-up survey this year by the state watchdog agency, the Office of Performance Evaluations, some coroners said “the lack of dedicated funding prevents them from obtaining necessary equipment, securing full-time staff, and increasing autopsy capacity.”
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“The coroner system in Idaho is broken and a joke,” one unnamed coroner replied to the survey.
That was part of a trend of local coroners wanting the state to step in, ProPublica recently reported.
Lawsuit claims death investigation wasn’t warranted. Canyon County Prosecutor disputes that.
In his lawsuit in state court, Hodges asked the court to order government agencies to destroy any nude or graphic photos of his dead daughter and return the original photos to family, alleging that the photos were obtained without legal justification.
In his federal lawsuit, he alleges a slew of civil rights violations — many of which revolve around his claim that the county’s investigation into his daughter’s death was not legally justified.
In his state court lawsuit, Hodges cites two Idaho laws as recognizing “that not all deaths require a law enforcement response, particularly when there is no indication of foul play and the medical circumstances are understood.”
“In the case of my daughter, who had a known medical disease and had recently been seen by her physician, these protections were disregarded,” Hodges argues in his legal complaint. “Despite her established medical condition and the presence of a treating physician who could have certified her death, no effort was made to contact her doctor. Instead, the authorities proceeded with a criminal investigation, treating the scene as suspicious without medical justification.”
Citing a report from paramedics, Hodges told the Sun paramedics talked with a doctor about Kylie’s care while they were trying to resuscitate her. In his lawsuit, he claims coroner staff failed to apply an exemption in Idaho law that he claims doesn’t require investigations into children’s deaths if they have a known medical condition.
Asked about Hodges’ lawsuits, Canyon County spokesperson Aaron Williams denied wrongdoing or disclosing any confidential information, but declined to comment more on the issues raised in the lawsuits.
“Canyon County follows any and all current laws regarding public record requests,” he said.
Boyd previously has said a law enforcement investigation into Hodges’ daughter’s death was warranted.
In his May letter to Hodges, Boyd cited an Idaho law that requires coroners refer death investigations to local law enforcement “if a death occurs that is not attended by a physician and the cause of death cannot be certified by a physician.”
“In this matter, EMT’s were called to the scene to assist in attempts at resuscitation,” Boyd wrote. “Under the law, the presence of EMTs does not equate to a death occurring in the presence of a physician and therefore an investigation was warranted.”
Looking back on the night his daughter died, Hodges said he has one regret.
“It may sound incorrect, but because after what I went through, I wish I’d never called for help,” he said. “If I couldn’t have saved her on my own, we could’ve just buried her on the property and had the pastor come over and had a ceremony.”
He doesn’t want other parents to go through what he did.
“Being investigated as a suspect or whatever — that, that sticks with you,” he said.
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