OPINION: Why still no charges filed in Idaho prisoner death?

This editorial was published in The Idaho Statesman of Boise.

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Lewiston native Milo Warnock was killed in an Idaho prison eight months ago. The Ada County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office still has not filed charges against a suspect.

What’s taking so long?

“Justice delayed is justice denied,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote so eloquently.

In Milo’s case, justice has been delayed far too long.

As a comparison, Junior Garcia, 26, was killed June 14, 2023, in Idaho’s maximum security prison in Kuna.

Less than three months later, the suspect in Garcia’s killing, Juan Santos-Quintero Jr., 27, was charged with one felony count of first-degree murder, and he is currently on trial.

How long will it be before Mike and Kathy Warnock, of Clarkston, see their son’s suspected killer in court?

Milo Warnock, 45, was beaten to death by a fellow prisoner Dec. 10 in the Idaho State Correctional Center, according to the Idaho Department of Correction.

The suspect’s name has not been released, nor have circumstances surrounding what happened.

Meanwhile, the family waits for answers. And waits. And waits.

The excruciating wait exacerbates an already-tragic story.

Milo was arrested in August 2021 for driving under the influence, with a blood alcohol content of 0.11, according to the police report. Milo had a previous felony DUI conviction in 2013. With a second DUI within 15 years of the most recent one, it was considered a felony under Idaho law. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Milo’s court proceedings were delayed until 2023.

During that whole time, Milo rode to work on a bike and stayed sober. He showed up for work every day and showed up for urinalysis. His employer, YMC, an HVAC contractor in Meridian, vouched for Milo during his case.

But the judge still sent Milo to prison for at least two years.

And then it got worse.

Once in prison, Milo was “cheeking” his medication (pretending to take it but saving it for the morning) because he said it prevented him from sleeping at night.

He tried to request a change in his medication time, but he was never told that the prison was no longer using paper request forms, even though the prison still had the forms and boxes for them around the prison.

Milo got caught breaking the rules and was reclassified as a “maximum-level offender,” which got him a ticket to Cell Block G of the prison, where more serious offenders were.

There, according to his family, he was placed in a cell with a man who had a history of violence and mental health issues.

Milo had written to his family about problems with his cellmate and efforts he was making to smooth things over with him.

“I have tried to help him, so that I can feel good about myself (philanthropy is self centered behavior, as Dickens points out in Bleak House),” Milo wrote to his mother Dec. 7, three days before he was killed. “I can’t help him, tho ... .”

It’s perplexing that it’s taking this long, when you have a controlled environment and a suspect who already is in custody. Why would it take eight months to investigate and file charges?

So many things went against Milo that his dad called him “hard-luck Milo.”

That hard luck landed him in court, earned him a prison sentence, put him in a cell block with more dangerous offenders and eventually resulted in Milo’s death, something that never should have happened.

Milo got himself in trouble, but then it seemed as though the system was working against him every step of the way.

And now, even after his death, the system is still working against him.

The Ada County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office owes Milo’s family justice in this case.

And it needs to be a lot swifter than they’re getting now.

TNS