Idaho's Coroner System: Where Libertarian Principles Meet Dead Children and Shrug

The Funeral Director Will See You Now (If You're Dead, That Is)

There exists in these United States a place so committed to the principle of small government that it has successfully achieved governmental nonexistence in the one area where you'd think even the most fervent Gadsden flag enthusiast might want a little professional intervention: determining why children are dying.

Welcome to Idaho, where the state motto should be amended to read: "Don't Tread on Me (Because We Can't Afford the Autopsy to Determine Cause of Death)."

The Numbers Don't Lie, But Idaho Coroners Might Not Know What They Mean

Let us contemplate the majesty of Idaho's achievement: dead last in the nation for conducting autopsies in suspicious, unexpected, and unnatural child deaths. Not second-to-last. Not "struggling but improving." Dead. Fucking. Last.

Between 2018 and 2022, Idaho autopsied just 49% of child deaths from external or unknown causes. The national rate? 79%. But why let some coastal elite "standard" dictate how Idaho handles its dead children? That's probably what Big Autopsy wants you to think.

Consider baby Onyxx of Bonneville County, who died suddenly and received no autopsy. Not because the death wasn't suspicious. Not because the family didn't want answers. But because Idaho's coroner system operates on the same organizational principle as a potluck dinner: everybody brings what they can, nobody's really in charge, and sometimes you end up with food poisoning and no way to trace the source.

The Undertaker's Apprentice: A System Built on Grift and Gumption

Here's Idaho's innovation in death investigation: elect your local funeral director to the position of coroner. It's vertical integration for the death industry! Why merely profit from burying the dead when you could also control the investigation into how they died? It's the kind of conflict of interest so brazen it almost commands respect.

These fine elected officials—many with zero medical training—are tasked with determining cause of death, ordering autopsies, and investigating suspicious circumstances. It's like electing your barber to perform surgery because, hey, they both involve sharp instruments and bodily fluids.

The system has been broken for at least 25 years, according to documents uncovered by ProPublica's Audrey Dutton, who apparently has more investigative rigor than Idaho's entire coroner apparatus. Multiple reports, multiple recommendations, multiple decades of knowing the system doesn't work—and Idaho's response has been the governmental equivalent of a shrug emoji.

The Reform: A Fee Increase and a Prayer

After national embarrassment finally penetrated the state's rugged individualist force field, Idaho lawmakers have sprung into action with the kind of modest, incremental reform that screams "we're doing something" while carefully avoiding doing anything meaningful.

The bold solution? Increase fees on death certificates to finance autopsy reimbursements. Nothing says "we value determining why children die" like a modest user fee attached to the paperwork you file after someone's already dead.

Meanwhile, as Idaho pushes these tepid reforms, counties are simultaneously seeking to make the system less transparent—because apparently the problem with a system that fails to investigate child deaths isn't the failure itself, but the public finding out about it.

The Libertarian Ouroboros Eats Its Own Tail

There's a special irony in Idaho's predicament. This is a state that prides itself on self-sufficiency, personal responsibility, and minimal government interference. Yet when it comes to the most basic governmental function—determining how and why citizens die—the state has achieved such profound dysfunction that it ranks below every other jurisdiction in the nation.

The libertarian fantasy collapses precisely where it must: at the intersection of specialized knowledge, public resources, and collective responsibility. You cannot bootstrap your way to forensic pathology. You cannot audit a child's death through the invisible hand of the free market. You cannot elect an undertaker to do a medical examiner's job and expect anything but failure.

Vague Rules, Insufficient Resources, Infinite Bullshit

The investigations revealed "myriad shortcomings": vague rules, insufficient resources, coroner's offices not meeting their own state-mandated education standards. It's a symphony of governmental dysfunction, conducted by elected officials who campaigned on the promise that government doesn't work—and then proved it through their own incompetence.

Death investigation practices vary by county, meaning your child's death might be thoroughly investigated in one jurisdiction and completely ignored in the next, depending on whether the local coroner happens to give a shit or has the training to know what questions to ask.

Some coroners cited "too many cases, not enough time or money." Which is what happens when you treat death investigation as a part-time gig for the local mortician rather than a critical public health function requiring dedicated professionals and adequate funding.

The Work Group: Where Reform Goes to Die (Without an Autopsy)

State Senator Melissa Wintrow and other lawmakers have formed a work group to "craft future legislation." They're meeting with coroners and law enforcement. They're having conversations. They're generating the kind of process-oriented busy work that lets politicians claim they're addressing a problem without actually solving it.

To the parents whose children died without adequate investigation, these meetings offer the same comfort as Idaho's autopsy rate: statistically insignificant.

The Prophecy

Here's what will happen: Idaho will pass modest reforms. Fees will increase marginally. Some training requirements might be added. The system will remain fundamentally broken because fixing it would require admitting that some things—like determining why children die—require professional expertise, adequate funding, and centralized standards.

The coroner's offices will remain understaffed and undertrained. The autopsy rate will tick up slightly, enough to move Idaho from "national disgrace" to merely "well below acceptable standards." Another baby will die under suspicious circumstances. Another coroner will decide an autopsy isn't necessary. Another family will never get answers.

And Idaho will continue to pride itself on its independence, its small government principles, its refusal to let outsiders tell them how to run their affairs—even as its children die uninvestigated, their deaths uninvestigated, their lives unmourned by a system too cheap and too ideologically rigid to determine what killed them.

The state that won't tread on you won't investigate you either. At least you'll die free.

Dead last in the nation. The only ranking Idaho leads is the one measured in uninvestigated child corpses. Don't Tread on Me, indeed.