Defense takes aim at Idaho’s death penalty ahead of Bryan Kohberger capital murder trial

Bryan Kohberger’s defense beat back at prosecutors’ plan to give an Ada County jury the option to hand the University of Idaho homicide suspect a death sentence in the latest court filings of the closely watched case.

Kohberger’s attorneys this week filed more than a dozen briefs to support their ongoing effort to strike the death penalty as a possible sentence for the man suspected of killing four U of I students in November 2022. The filings came in response to objections earlier this month from state prosecutors who want capital punishment for Kohberger if he is convicted of murder. 

The new defense briefs, each signed by Kootenai County public defender Jay Logsdon, aimed to pick away at prosecutors’ arguments about the appropriateness and their authority in Idaho to seek a death sentence for Kohberger. Logsdon countered in his briefs that many of the grounds for doing so are inconsistent, outdated or unconstitutional, based on U.S. and Idaho laws and legal precedents. 

In 2015, when the Idaho Supreme Court ruled on contemporary standards of decency concerning the death penalty, 32 U.S. states had active capital punishment programs, Logsdon wrote in one challenge. That total has since dropped to 27 states, including Idaho, but with six of those states maintaining governor-imposed execution moratoriums, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. 

“The evolving standards of society, and the unusualness of the death penalty, have changed,” Logsdon argued. “This court should take these changes into account and strike the penalty in this matter.”

Kohberger’s murder trial was set to take place in Moscow, but his attorneys successfully argued the location should be changed over concerns of local juror bias. 

The Idaho Supreme Court moved the trial to Boise, where it is now overseen by Judge Steven Hippler of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District in Ada County. Kohberger’s trial is scheduled for summer 2025.

Kohberger is accused of killing the four U of I students at an off-campus home in Moscow almost two years ago. The case, including a nearly seven-week manhunt for a suspect that ended in eastern Pennsylvania with his arrest, drew global interest and continues to garner national attention ahead of his scheduled trial in Boise. 

The victims in the early morning attack were Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Wash. Each of the students was stabbed to death with a large knife, according to the local coroner. 

Kohberger is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary. Prosecutors last year issued their intent to seek the death penalty, citing five aggravating factors, including that the killings were “especially heinous” and that the defendant would be a “continuing threat to society.”

Logsdon separately targeted each aggravator. He wrote that the heinousness standard was adopted by the state’s highest court, but Idaho law does not allow a defendant to be put to death on any grounds unless approved by the Legislature. In addition, Logsdon argued that someone’s future potential to commit a crime is not legally sufficient to sentence someone to death. 

“… Idaho’s scheme fails utterly to define those who should be death eligible,” he wrote. 

Earlier this month, based on a separate challenge, prosecutors withdrew one of their five initial aggravators, leaving four remaining. If the jurors convict Kohberger, they need only to establish one aggravating factor to give him the death penalty if it remains a possible sentence in the case. 

Kohberger, who will turn 30 next month, has been in police custody for about 22 months following his December 2022 arrest on suspicion of the homicides. He was unanimously indicted in May 2023 on the five felony charges by a Latah County grand jury, and a judge entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf when he remained silent.