Bryan Kohberger defense eyes death penalty fine print in Idaho student murders

As University of Idaho student murders suspect Bryan Kohberger gets closer to a November hearing that his defense hopes will take the death penalty off the table before he goes to trial, his defense team is burying prosecutors in a barrage of court documents.

Lawyers for the Pennsylvania criminologist submitted more than a dozen last week in response to prosecutors’ opposition to much of their latest legal maneuvering. 

The defense hopes to have two expert witnesses testify at the hearing and is asking the court to strike nearly a dozen aspects of the prosecution’s quest to have their client put to death if convicted.

His team is also challenging the death penalty as a potentially cruel or unusual punishment, arguing that it goes against “contemporary standards of decency.”

Just two dozen states allow the death penalty currently, defense lawyer Jay Logsdon argued.

“In reality, less than half the states still have the death penalty pursuant to legislative or executive actions,” he wrote. “Taking population of those states into account, support for the death penalty is even bleaker.”

One of them, however, is Idaho, which last year revived the firing squad for cases where lethal injection isn’t possible.

In another filing, arguing against prosecutors’ assertion of his client’s propensity to kill or “future dangerousness,” Logsdon accused them, and Idaho’s Supreme Court, of mixing up the definitions of manslaughter and murder. 

He pointed to the ongoing case of death row inmate Thomas Creech, who himself is scheduled for execution on Nov. 13 after a botched attempt earlier this year after he beat a fellow inmate to death while serving a sentence for two other murders.

“What the Idaho Supreme Court of 1983 did not grasp is that it was describing first degree murder as opposed to voluntary manslaughter,” he wrote. “…The State repeats this mistake rather than grappling with it – understandably, because to do otherwise would be to admit that Idaho’s scheme fails utterly to define those who should be death eligible.”

Under Idaho law, prosecutors had 60 days after Kohberger’s arraignment on May 22, 2023 to announce they would seek the death penalty upon conviction if they intended to do so.

About a month later they did so, alleging in court filings that the former criminology Ph.D. student “has exhibited a propensity to commit murder which will probably constitute a continuing threat to society.”

Kohberger is accused of killing Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20 and Ethan Chapin, 20, in a 4 a.m. attack on Nov. 13, 2022. All four were staying in a six-bedroom home just steps from the University of Idaho campus.

Two housemates survived the attack, including one who told prosecutors she heard someone crying and saw a masked man leave.

Detectives found a Ka-Bar knife sheath under Mogen’s body, which prosecutors alleged in court filings had Kohberger’s DNA on the snap.

Kohberger was studying for a Ph.D. in criminology at the neighboring Washington State University, less than 10 miles from the crime scene. He has a master’s degree in criminal justice from DeSales University in Pennsylvania.

A judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf at the arraignment. His trial is expected to begin next year.