InvestigateWest

In April, Spokane police arrested a man for grabbing a woman by the neck and pushing her to the ground. A neighbor had called 911 worried that the yelling next door was a domestic violence situation, and the woman told an officer through tears that she was sick of her boyfriend putting his hands on her, according to the police report.

But Spokane County prosecutors decided to decline the case because the victim didn’t want to pursue charges.

Prosecutors say a court ruling aimed at reducing unreasonable caseloads for public defenders has forced some difficult decisions. In Spokane County, prosecutors have refused to prosecute 130 cases since January 2025.

Nearly two dozen Oregon rural hospitals will receive $37.5 million in state and federal funds to shore up labor and delivery care ahead of Medicaid cuts going into effect next year, though state and hospital officials say the one-time funds are likely a limited solution.

Shoreline Community College failed to ask job applicants like Everett High teacher Kevin Kukla if they had ever been under investigation for sexual misconduct. Now the college is updating its hiring rules.

An Oregon jury has convicted a Corvallis mother of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment in her infant daughter’s death, without hearing most of the evidence she had also allegedly been abused by the baby’s father.

InvestigateWest previously highlighted the parallels between this case and other failure to protect prosecutions targeting mothers, many of whom are domestic violence victims prosecuted over their partner’s abuse of their children. Much of the couple's history of domestic violence — which Albin's attorneys had argued was crucial in understanding her decisions at the time — didn't make it to trial after prosecutors successfully limited that evidence.

Washington was the first to enact “Don’t Pass the Trash” legislation two decades ago, but gaps remain. Experts say these reforms could help hold more teachers accountable for sexual abuse.

After two-month-old Opal Oaks died in February 2023, Oregon prosecutors suspected the father of abuse - and the mom of protecting him, instead of their child.

The mother, Deborah Albin, has said she took Opal to regular checkups and the doctor never flagged the baby's broken ribs. Albin also says that she, too was abused by the dad. The state has tried to limit how much evidence of domestic violence she can discuss at trial.

The case echoes patterns in similar "failure to protect" cases brought across the country, which critics say rely on unrealistic stereotypes about mothers facing domestic violence and can unfairly punish victims for their partner's actions.

When a 7-year-old girl, caught in the middle of a custody battle, said that her uncle r***d her and that her dad didn’t protect her, Angela Rinaldo wasn’t convinced.

Rinaldo, a guardian ad litem appointed to represent the child’s best interests, believed that the girl had been coached to make the allegations. She maintained that belief as prosecutors charged the uncle for child r**e and as a jury later convicted him.

A judge later called out Rinaldo for failing to do her job. But by then, the girl's mom said the damage had already been done.

Idaho’s rapid rise in incarceration rates has left the state with more prisoners than space to house them -- and those already incarcerated say they’re unfairly being punished for it. Five women told us they were sent to segregated housing units - small cells usually reserved for punishment - where they were confined for 23 hours a day.

Mill Creek Police launched an investigation into Everett Public Schools teacher Kevin Kukla in April 2024 after a custodian found Kukla receiving a back massage from a student in his locked classroom. Although the teacher and student, then 18, denied they were romantically involved, years of text messages between the two reference kissing, loving and missing each other, and being afraid someone saw them lying in the back of the teacher’s car.

The police investigation ended after a detective found there wasn’t enough evidence to prove a physical relationship between the two. Kukla resigned from his position in June 2024 amid the school district’s third-party investigation, which he refused to participate in.

Later that year, Kukla found another job as an adjunct instructor at Shoreline Community College, just north of Seattle.

The sheriff's office in Owyhee County, Idaho has received at least $116,000 from Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of its agreement for local deputies to assist in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, one of hundreds of departments across the country collecting payments.

InvestigateWest obtained records of the payments, which offer some insight into how the federal dollars are being used by the sheriff’s office to boost its resources.