Judge rules in Bryan Kohberger defense's latest effort against death penalty

BOISE, Idaho — For the second time in as many weeks, the judge in charge of Bryan Kohberger’s upcoming murder trial rejected arguments from the defense to remove a possible death sentence for the defendant if he is found guilty of killing four University of Idaho students in 2022.

Judge Steven Hippler, of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District, on Tuesday denied the defense’s latest request to strike the death penalty as a sentencing option in the high-profile case based on allegations that prosecutors have failed to turn over evidence on time to Kohberger’s attorneys ahead of his trial. His public defense team, led by Anne Taylor, argued in filings and in a hearing earlier this month that delays to deliver documents through the legal process known as discovery bordered on making her ineffective in mounting a defense for Kohberger on four counts of first-degree murder.

Hippler’s decision was the 13th time he has ruled against the defense’s efforts to drop the possibility of a jury sending Kohberger to death row if he’s convicted. Last week, Hippler denied a separate push by Kohberger’s defense to pull the death penalty because of Kohberger’s autism spectrum disorder diagnosis.

“Because (the) defendant has failed to show discovery violation or due process violation by the state, sanctions are not warranted,” Hippler wrote in his Tuesday order.

“Defendant has not shown any bad faith by the state with regard to discovery production. While the discovery is indeed voluminous, the court does not find that the manner in which the state produced it violates (court precedent) or otherwise constitutes misconduct.”

Kohberger, 30, is accused of fatally stabbing the four U of I undergraduates at an off-campus Moscow home in November 2022. At the time, Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, 9 miles east of the Moscow campus.

The victims were seniors Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum and Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; junior Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington. The three women lived at the off-campus home with two female roommates who went physically unharmed in the attack, while Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend and stayed over for the night.

Kohberger was arrested in late December 2022 after a nearly seven-week manhunt that garnered national and international attention. A judge entered a not guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf at his May 2023 arraignment, and prosecutors issued their intent to seek the death penalty a month later.

Kohberger’s capital murder trial is scheduled to start with jury selection in late July in Boise and is expected to extend into November.

Kohberger murder trial date ‘carved in stone’

Idaho is one of 27 U.S. states with the death penalty, though correction officials haven’t executed a prisoner in more than a dozen years. Gov. Brad Little approved a law earlier this year that makes Idaho the only state with a firing squad as its lead execution method, which the parents of victim Kaylee Goncalves vocally supported.

A federal judge in Idaho on Tuesday blocked executions in the state until prison officials make upgrades to provide media witnesses with access to a concealed room where the execution team prepares and administers lethal injection drugs. The switch to the firing squad takes effect July 2026.

To avoid that future possibility, however, Kohberger’s attorneys tried to invoke a recent court ruling from Lori Vallow Daybell’s Idaho murder case. In 2023, an East Idaho judge decided the state could not pursue the death penalty if she was convicted as a sanction for repeat discovery violations. Prosecutors dropped a heavy volume of evidence on Vallow Daybell’s defense three weeks ahead of her trial, where she was found guilty of killing her two children. The jury instead sentenced her to life in prison without parole.

In February, Kohberger’s defense filed to remove the death penalty over allegations of late discovery. Prosecutors objected, and denied they had missed deadlines for turning over requested documents to the defense.

“I understand that the court has said, ‘This is the trial date, it’s carved in stone,’ ” Taylor told the court at a hearing earlier this month. “I’ve done my best to adhere to it, and I’m here now saying that the death penalty needs to be struck so that there’s fairness to Mr. Kohberger.”

Judges are granted wide discretion on how to sanction attorneys for discovery violations if they are deemed warranted. For example, Hippler could have chosen to limit evidence or witness testimony that prosecutors disclosed past deadline, give the defense more time on their deadlines, or pushed the trial out.

He also could drop the death penalty, as Judge Steven Boyce of Idaho’s 7th Judicial District decided in an unprecedented move in the state for Vallow Daybell’s case. But Hippler indicated at this month’s hearing that he was likely to show restraint over the defense’s request.

“The skeptic would look at this and say, ‘Well, this is what Judge Boyce did when there was a last-minute discovery issue,” Hippler told Taylor. “This isn’t a last-minute discovery issue. And it seems like this could be viewed as being calculated to be a method to get the death penalty off the table by waiting until the end to bring to the court’s attention the contention that you can’t get through all the discovery.”

Kohberger and Vallow Daybell’s legal circumstances are different, University of Idaho law professor Samuel Newton previously told the Idaho Statesman. While Vallow Daybell maintained her speedy trial right, which requires a trial within six months of entering a plea, Kohberger waived that right in August 2023 to provide his attorneys more time to prepare his defense.

Kohberger’s trial also remains more than two months out rather than a matter of weeks, as was the situation at the time with Vallow Daybell’s trial.

“So the Kohberger situation doesn’t fit into the same box,” Newton said. “They don’t have the speedy trial throttle on the back end, and there’s still time on the other end, so you have neither” issue.

Hippler acknowledged the same at the hearing. “The circumstances were completely different,” he told Taylor.

“I’m not saying our circumstances are identical, but it’s a due process issue,” she responded. “This is the appropriate remedy, and we’re asking the court to make the orders for the state’s disclosures and to strike death.”

In his Tuesday order, Hippler issued none of the possible sanctions against the state. He acknowledged that the amount of records prosecutors produced was voluminous, but it’s not the state’s job to point to those that are relevant to Kohberger’s defense, he concluded.

“Defendant asked for ‘everything,’ and ‘everything’ is what he received,” Hippler wrote. “Defendant cannot demand everything under the sun and then complain about the weight of all the planets.”

Kohberger is next set to appear before Hippler at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise for a hearing on May 15. The hearing will be streamed live by Idaho’s 4th Judicial District Court at: https://coi.isc.idaho.gov/docs/Stream/District-4/District-4.html

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