For family of man killed in an Idaho prison, indictment isn’t enough | Opinion
It’s been a long, excruciating nine months since Milo Warnock was killed in an Idaho prison.
And while Tuesday’s announcement that the Ada County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has finally indicted a suspect brings some relief, Milo’s family hopes to see broader justice beyond the conviction of a suspect.
“What I want to see happen is the investigation opened up so we can expose what goes on in the prison,” Milo’s father, Mike Warnock, told me by phone Tuesday. “Our rage is against the system and the prison and the whole works.”
As I wrote in a column back in January, Milo’s family feels he got a raw deal in being sent to prison for a DUI to begin with, and then things only got worse from there. During a two-year delay in his trial because of COVID, Milo rode a bicycle to work every day and never missed or failed a required urinalysis. And yet, the judge sentenced Milo to 10 years in prison, with at least two years fixed.
Then, once Milo was at the Idaho State Correctional Center, he was “cheeking” his prescribed medication, or pretending to take it at night and saving it for the next morning, because the medication kept him awake at night. He filled out paper forms to request a change in his medication time, but unbeknownst to him, the prison had stopped using paper forms, even though the forms and dropboxes were still available.
When he was caught cheeking his medication, it added 22 points to his offender rating, putting him one point over a medium-level offender and making him a maximum-level offender, according to the Warnocks.
Milo was taken to Cell Block G with other maximum-level offenders — a place Milo did not fit in or belong or deserve. And he landed in a cell with James M. Johnson, with whom Milo told his family he was having problems.
Milo said he was trying to help Johnson, reading “Catch-22” to him, buying a $300 television to have in their cell and spending 12 hours making a shelf out of folded cardboard for 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. ….”
Johnson was indicted last week by a grand jury, accused of killing Milo.
From Milo’s original prosecution and imprisonment to his treatment in prison and the nine-month wait for even an indictment, the family has felt the system has been working against them all along.
“I feel thankful finally things are moving, although my rage is not so much at Johnson, as it is at the prison,” Mike Warnock said. “I mean, (Johnson) had all of these problems, and they throw him in with Milo, who shouldn’t have been there to begin with. I mean, that’s where the problem is. But I’m glad at least we got to this point.”
It’s a sentiment echoed by Milo’s sister, Hallie Johnson.
“Over the past nine-plus months we’ve agonized over the lack of information about Milo’s death as well as what has felt like a very slow investigation,” she wrote to me in an email. “It is a relief that the indictment has occurred, but we know it’s the beginning of more waiting as the judicial process plays out.”
Milo’s mother, Kathy Warnock, told me earlier that the issue of the death penalty in this case never was broached.
“We wouldn’t want that,” Kathy wrote to me in an email. “We think James Johnson is a badly broken individual. Milo said this from the beginning. We have had no contact with James’ family, but we feel they also have cause for anger.”
For the family, justice for Milo will be more than just a conviction.
“It’s impossible not to be reminded of the senselessness of Milo’s death,” Hallie wrote. “I hope that these painful reminders for our family are reminders to the public that there are issues with the criminal justice system.”
This story was originally published September 4, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
