Indictment brings relief, but Milo Warnock’s family seeks broader justice

It’s been a long, harrowing nine months since Milo Warnock was murdered in an Idaho prison.

And while Tuesday’s announcement that the Ada County District Attorney’s Office has finally charged a suspect provides some relief, Milo’s family hopes to see broader justice beyond the conviction of one suspect.

“What I want is for an investigation to be opened so we can expose what is happening in the prison,” Milo’s father, Mike Warnock, told me by phone on Tuesday. “Our anger is against the system, the prison and everything it does.”

As I wrote in a column in January, Milo’s family feels he received a raw deal by being sent to prison for drunk driving, and that things only got worse from there. During a two-year delay in his trial due to COVID, Milo rode his bike to work every day and never missed a trial or failed a mandatory urine test. And yet the judge sentenced Milo to 10 years in prison, with at least two years fixed.

Then, when Milo arrived at the Idaho State Correctional Facility, he began taking 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 schedule, but unbeknownst to him, the prison had stopped using paper forms, even though the forms and drop boxes were still available.

When he was caught dispensing his medication, it added 22 points to his offender rating, putting him one point above a mid-level offender and making him a top-level offender, according to the Warnocks.

Milo was taken to Cell Block G with other high-risk offenders, a place Milo didn’t fit in, didn’t belong, and didn’t deserve. And he ended up in a cell with James M. Johnson, who Milo told his family he was having problems with.

Milo said he was trying to help Johnson, reading “Catch-22” to him, buying him a $300 television to keep in his cell and spending 12 hours making him a shelf out of folded cardboard.

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

Johnson was indicted last week by a grand jury on charges of killing Milo.

From Milo’s original prosecution and incarceration to his treatment in prison and the nine-month wait for an indictment, the family has felt like the system has been working against them this entire time.

“I’m grateful that things are finally moving forward, although my anger is not so much with Johnson, but with the prison,” Mike Warnock said. “I mean, (Johnson) had all these problems, and they put him in with Milo, who shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I mean, that’s the problem. But I’m glad we’re at least at this point.”

It’s a sentiment shared by Milo’s sister, Hallie Johnson.

“For the past nine months we have suffered from a lack of information about Milo’s death, as well as what has seemed like a very slow investigation,” she wrote to me in an email. “It is a relief that the indictment has been filed, but we know that this is the beginning of more waiting as the court process plays out.”

Milo’s mother, Kathy Warnock, previously told me that the question of the death penalty in this case was never addressed.

“We don’t want that,” Kathy wrote to me in an email. “We believe James Johnson is a very broken person. Milo said that from the beginning. We have had no contact with James’ family, but we believe they have reason to be angry as well.”

For the family, justice for Milo will be more than just a conviction.

“It is impossible not to be reminded of how senseless Milo’s death was,” Hallie wrote. “I hope these painful reminders to our family are reminders to the public that there are problems with the criminal justice system.”