Prosecutors are arguing for the death penalty in the murder of an Idaho college student

On October 13, 2024By Yukito

BOISE – Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students, should indeed face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder, state prosecutors argue in newly filed court documents.

The prosecutor’s office presented its position on why Idaho’s death penalty laws should apply in the high-profile case, which is currently scheduled for trial in August 2025. The full briefs came in response to Kohberger’s defense attorney questioning the possible death sentence last month for their client if the jury finds him guilty.

Prosecutors, led by Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson, announced last year their intention to seek the death sentence for Kohberger. As required by Idaho law, they cited so-called aggravating factors to justify eligibility for the death penalty, including allegations that Kohberger “has demonstrated a complete disregard for human life” and “a propensity to commit murder that is likely to pose an ongoing danger to society.” “

Prosecutors this week missed a court-imposed deadline to file an objection to the defense’s efforts to eliminate the death penalty from the possible sentence. In 13 legal briefs, the prosecutor’s office rejected thousands of pages previously filed by the defense that included a myriad of arguments, including saying the state’s death penalty statute was “unconstitutionally vague,” violated modern standards of decency and violated international human rights law.

“The essence of defendant’s argument is that there has been a fundamental shift in public opinion about the morality, decency and humanity of the death penalty,” reads one of the briefs signed by Thompson and Ingrid Batey, the special assistant attorney general for Idaho assigned to the case.

They wrote that most U.S. states still retain the death penalty in their laws, despite defense claims that the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment that violates constitutional rights.

“The court should deny the defendant’s motion because this is an issue that has already been decided by the Idaho Supreme Court,” the prosecutor’s office argued. “The defendant asks the court to ignore the Idaho precedent as well as the precedent set by the United States Supreme Court.”

Kohberger, 29, is accused of stabbing four UW students to death in November 2022 at an off-campus home in Moscow. The victims were Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle, both 20, and Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncavles, both 21. .

The three women lived with two other roommates in a rented house on King Road that was demolished late last year, and Chapin stayed overnight with his girlfriend Kernodle. The other two roommates were unharmed and are widely expected to testify at the trial.

At the time of the killings, Kohberger was living in nearby Pullman, Washington, as a graduate student at Washington State University. He was arrested in late December 2022 at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania during the school’s winter break and then taken to Idaho to face the charges.

Kohberger faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. He is being held without bond at the Ada County Jail in Boise.

At the request of the defense over concerns about local juror bias in the community where the crime occurred, the previous judge agreed to change the venue of Kohberger’s upcoming capital murder trial. The Idaho Supreme Court transferred the case from Moscow to Boise and assigned it to Judge Steven Hippler of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District.

The prosecutor’s office withdraws one element supporting the death penalty

In its earlier death penalty submissions, Kohberger’s defense team proposed that the court divide the criminal proceedings into three parts: a jury trial, death penalty eligibility and sentencing stages. Idaho’s criminal statutes generally divide death penalty cases into jury trial and sentencing.

In response, prosecutors rejected the defense’s suggested alternative of sentencing Kohberger to death if a first-time jury found him guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt. They argued that, if adopted, Idaho’s nontraditional master case sentencing model carries the risk of “unintended consequences” beyond disregarding long-standing judicial precedent in the state.

“It defies common sense to believe that a defendant would benefit from a triple trial in which a jury would consider whether he poses a future risk of danger and is therefore eligible for the death penalty without hearing all the mitigating evidence relevant to that perpetrator” – another conclusion To read. “The court should decline to depart from the procedures outlined in the Idaho Code.”

But in this week’s findings, prosecutors dropped one of five aggravating factors they had originally identified as supporting seeking the death penalty against Kohberger if he was found guilty. Previously, they accused him of committing murder while committing a burglary crime, as well as “killing, intending to kill or acting with reckless indifference to human life.”

In his death penalty dissent, Kohberger’s defense attorney argued that U.S. legal precedent does not allow prosecutors to use double charging and aggravating circumstances when two related crimes are burglary and murder.

The defense argued that the charge of burglary – defined in Idaho law as illegally entering a property with the intent to commit theft or other crime – is already connected to the occurrence of another crime. Therefore, the same crime, and in this case murder, cannot also be the basis for an aggravating circumstance when the only other charge is burglary, wrote defense attorney Jay Logsdon.

“Under Idaho law, the crime of murder cannot be based on a burglary with the sole purpose of murder,” the defense filing states.

Prosecutors, in turn, changed their intention to seek the death penalty, citing the four remaining aggravating factors they had previously raised. Under Idaho law, a jury must find only one aggravating factor in a case, including that the crime included more than one murder, to return a death sentence.

Court records show Kohberger’s burglary allegations remain valid.

Prosecutors in this week’s filings also objected to the defense’s plan to use two expert witnesses at the Nov. 7 abolition hearing in Ada County Superior Court: University of California law professor Aliza Cover and Dr. Barbara Wolf, a medical examiner licensed in Florida.

Prosecutors argued that Idaho court rules of evidence did not allow such testimony.

The defense must submit responses to the prosecutor’s death penalty allegations by October 24.

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