Lawyers for man charged in deaths of four Idaho students say trial should be moved over strong bias

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Attorneys for the man accused of stabbing and killing four University of Idaho students in 2022 say the pressure to convict him is so severe that some Latah County residents are predicting lynch mobs or riots if he is acquitted.

Bryan Kohberger’s defense attorney, Elisa Massoth, made that argument in a filing this month, saying the only way he can get a fair trial is to move him to a new location.

Second District Judge John Judge is scheduled to preside over a hearing on the motion for a change of venue Thursday morning. If he agrees, the trial, scheduled for June 2025, could be moved from Moscow to Boise or another larger Idaho city.

Kohberger, a former criminal justice student at Washington State University, which is located across the state line in Pullman, faces four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.

The four University of Idaho students were killed sometime in the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, in a rented home near campus.

Police arrested Kohberger six weeks later at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was spending winter break.

The murders stunned students at both universities and deeply shocked the small city of Moscow. They also sparked widespread media coverage, much of which Kohberger’s defense team said was provocative and left the close-knit community strongly biased against their client.

Kohberger first requested a change of venue in January, when his attorney Anne Taylor wrote in a court filing that a fair and impartial jury could be found in Latah County “due to the extensive and inflammatory pretrial publicity, the allegations made about Mr. Kohberger to the public by the media that will be inadmissible at his trial, the small size of the community, the salacious nature of the alleged crimes, and the seriousness of the charges Mr. Kohberger faces.”

Defendants have a constitutional right to a fair trial, and that requires finding jurors who can be impartial and who have not already made up their minds about the defendant’s guilt or innocence. But when the defense team hired a firm to survey Latah County residents, 98% of respondents said they recognized the case and 70% of that group said they had already formed the opinion that Kohberger is guilty. More than half of respondents with that opinion also said nothing would change their minds, according to documents filed with the defense court.

Some respondents also made dire predictions, according to the filing, saying that if Kohberger is acquitted, “there will probably be a riot and he won’t be out for long because someone will get him justice,” “they will burn down the courthouse” and “there will be riots, the parents will take care of him.”

Prosecutors wanted the judge to disregard the survey, arguing that it did not include all the data about people who refused to take it. Prosecutor Bill Thompson and Special Assistant Attorney General Ingrid Batey said in court papers that there are other ways to ensure a fair trial without moving the proceedings hundreds of miles away, including expanding the pool of potential jurors to include neighboring counties.

Any change of venue would be costly and would also require court staff, witnesses, experts, law enforcement officers and victims’ families to make an inconvenient trip to the new location, the prosecution team said.

Media coverage of the murder investigation was not limited to local and national media outlets. True-crime television shows, books, podcasts and YouTube streams also focused on the case, as did social media groups on sites like Facebook, Reddit and TikTok.

Taylor said the media coverage has “completely corrupted” the atmosphere in Latah County.

“Once the police arrested Mr. Kohberger, the public was ready to vilify him, and they have done so, disregarding the constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence and the right to an impartial jury and a fair trial,” Taylor wrote. “The media attention on Mr. Kohberger has been relentless and highly inflammatory.”