Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students, has asked a judge to reconsider the orders denying his motions to have the indictment against him dismissed.
Kohberger, 29, is charged with four counts of murder and one count of burglary in the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. The four were found fatally stabbed in an off-campus rental home near the university campus in Moscow on November 13, 2022.
At the time of the slayings, Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at Washington State University in nearby Pullman. He was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania after investigators pieced together DNA evidence, cellphone data and surveillance video that they say linked him to the crime.
The judge entered not guilty pleas on Kohberger’s behalf last year. He faces the death penalty if convicted. A trial date has not yet been set, but Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson has asked for it to be scheduled for this summer.
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Last year, Kohberger’s attorneys filed motions asking Judge John Judge to throw out the grand jury indictment against Kohberger, alleging that the prosecution improperly withheld evidence from grand jurors. Kohberger’s lawyers also argued that the jurors were biased and that there was insufficient evidence to justify the indictment. Judge rejected the arguments last month.
In another effort to get the indictment tossed, Kohberger’s attorneys filed a motion on December 21 requesting Judge reconsider his previous orders denying the motions to dismiss the indictment.
On December 28 the judge scheduled a closed-door hearing to hear arguments pertaining to the motion seeking to dismiss the indictment on the grounds of a biased grand jury, inadmissible and insufficient evidence and prosecutorial misconduct for 11 a.m. PT on January 26.
“This hearing will be sealed and closed to the public to protect the privacy of the grand jurors and the grand jury’s procedures,” he wrote in his order.
Judge scheduled a public hearing for 1 p.m. that day, to hear arguments about dismissing the indictment on the grounds that inaccurate instructions were provided to grand jurors. Following that, a public hearing on Thompson’s request to schedule a trial date will begin.
Judge wrote in a December 15 ruling that Kohberger’s defense attorneys had “failed to successfully challenge the indictment on grounds of juror bias, lack of sufficient admissible evidence, or prosecutorial misconduct.”
Kohberger “was indicted by an impartial grand jury who had sufficient admissible evidence to find probable cause to believe Kohberger committed the crimes alleged by the State,” he wrote. “Further, the State did not engage in prosecutorial misconduct in presenting their case to the jury.”
In their other motion to dismiss the indictment, Kohberger’s attorneys had argued that the grand jury was given inaccurate instructions and used the wrong standard of proof, arguing that the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” should have been used, rather than the lower threshold of “probable cause.”
Judge wrote in his ruling that there is “no dispute” that the correct standard of probable cause was used.
“The grand jury is not a trial jury. Its function is to screen whether or not there is sufficient evidence to proceed to trial,” Judge wrote.
“The arguments from the defense for a ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard for the grand jury were historically interesting and creative,” Judge added, but “do not overturn” Idaho courts’ interpretation of the statute, case law and criminal rules that the standard for the grand jury to indict is probable cause.
A gag order imposed in the case bars the prosecution, defense attorneys and law enforcement officials from discussing it.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.