BOISE, Idaho — Defense attorneys for Bryan Kohberger will attempt to remove the possibility he’d face the death penalty, a sentence prosecutors plan to pursue if a jury finds him guilty of murder in the deaths of four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
Kohberger’s defense team met a court deadline Thursday to file challenges to the state’s planned pursuit of capital punishment. The defense submitted 13 filings, which posted publicly to a state courts website later in the day.
The documents included thousands of pages full of arguments and citations to precedents, and Kohberger’s attorneys alleged that Idaho’s various laws regarding the death penalty are “unconstitutionally vague.”
Prosecutors issued their intent last year to seek the death penalty against the 29-year-old accused of killing the U of I students. Prosecutors may now submit their response to the defense’s challenge by Oct. 10. A hearing on the death penalty issue is scheduled for Nov. 7.
Kohberger is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the fatal stabbings of the college students at an off-campus home on King Road in Moscow. The victims were Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle, both 20, and Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21.
At the time, Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, on the Idaho state line. He was arrested almost seven weeks later at his parents’ Pennsylvania home in December 2022 and brought to Idaho to face the charges.
To sentence Kohberger to death, jurors would need to unanimously find that there were aggravating factors, which include the occurrence of more than one killing at one time, under Idaho law. Idaho’s alternative sentence for first-degree murder is life in prison, which would mean the convicted defendant must serve at least 10 years before the chance of parole.
Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson, who’s leading the prosecution of Kohberger, cited four aggravating factors in his decision to pursue the death penalty, including that the four victims’ deaths were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel, manifesting exceptional depravity.”
The defendant also “exhibited utter disregard for human life,” Thompson said, as well as “a propensity to commit murder, which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society,” Thompson wrote in a court filing.
Defense argues for change in sentencing phase of trial
In its flurry of motions, Kohberger’s defense moved to strike that aggravating factor, citing the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, saying the Idaho Supreme Court cannot place a “limiting construction” on the statute.
“A statutory aggravating factor is unconstitutionally vague if it fails to furnish principled guidance for the choice between death and a lesser penalty,” the filing said.
Kohberger’s defense also filed a motion to strike the “heinous, atrocious, or cruel” aggravator and the multiple victims aggravator.
“This motion is made on the grounds that murders cannot be aggregated in a manner that makes the act of a malice aforethought murder aggravated,” the filing to strike the multiple victims aggravator said.
In addition, the students’ stabbing deaths took place in the midst of another crime, which Idaho also defines as an aggravating factor in death penalty cases, Thompson previously wrote. Kohberger is charged with one count of felony burglary in addition to the murder counts.
Kohberger’s defense asked the court to strike that as well, saying that “murder cannot be predicated on a burglary predicated on murder.”
In a filing to break up the proceedings into three parts, the defense said there should be separate culpability, eligibility and sentencing phases, rather than just two phases: culpability and penalty. To not break them up would violate Kohberger’s constitutional rights, his attorneys said.
The defense said that because the state will attempt to produce substantial evidence for the aggravating factors, some of which may be considered nonstatutory — such as victim impact statements, hearsay and information about Kohberger’s past — then the nonstatutory aggravation evidence should be presented during a separate hearing, after the jury considers the issue of whether the statutory aggravators apply.
“When jurors are emotionally overwhelmed by extensive victim impact evidence, they are likely to use the evidence and their grief for the victims to the support statutory aggravators even though it is unrelated,” the defense wrote in Thursday’s documents.
In another filing, the defense asked that the prosecution be required to prove any nonstatutory aggravating fact or circumstance beyond a reasonable doubt to the “unanimous satisfaction” of the jury, before the jury can consider it as a reason to support a death sentence.
Kohberger appeared in court last week for a hearing over whether to move his capital murder trial out of Moscow on arguments from his attorneys that he cannot obtain a fair trial there. They have asked Judge to change the venue to Boise, which prosecutors oppose.
After the all-day hearing, Judge acknowledged the choice is probably “the most difficult decision I’ve ever had to make” of his legal career. He said he would issue his ruling at a later time.
Earlier this summer, Judge scheduled Kohberger’s trial to start in June 2025.
